Profile

Soldier of Fortune

Alan Munro | APRIL 2008

Unknown in Australia, the 2008 Senior Australian of the Year is revered by millions of poor people in towns and villages across the globe. Alan Munro talks to the pioneer who created a charity that gives nothing away, and helped millions escape the poverty trap.

Charles Dickens knew a thing or two about poverty and deprivation. In Bleak House, he wrote, “…there were two classes of charitable people; one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.”

Dickens would have liked David Bussau. Recently honoured as the 2008 Senior Australian of the Year, for thirty years this quiet achiever has helped millions of the poorest of the poor lift themselves out of the desperation of grinding poverty, and made no noise at all about it.

David Bussau too knows a thing or two about poverty and deprivation. Born in New Zealand he was abandoned by his parents as a young child. Essentially he grew up an orphan. At eight he had to make a decision: remain in the boys home or return to his family. He chose the orphanage.

It wasn’t hard, he says. “If you came from the hostile environment that I came from you just wouldn’t want to go back into it, even at eight.”

At sixteen, heading out alone into the world, he was just as certain of what he wanted to do.

“When I left the boys home I wanted a whole new persona. I didn’t want the past to dictate to me what my future was going to be. I just made that decision: I’ll have a name change; I’ll reinvent myself, I’ll work my butt off and I’ll go out there and make a fortune.”

That’s what he did. The young David Williams became David Bussau, and went to work selling hotdogs. Fifteen businesses later he and his wife, Carol, had moved to Sydney and bought into the construction industry. By 35 he had reached what he calls “the economics of enough.”

With sufficient resources to live comfortably for the rest of their lives David and Carol began to think of what might come next.

In 1974 they went to Darwin after Cyclone Tracy devastated the city. While David’s construction teams helped rebuild indigenous housing, Carol ran a hostel.

In 1975 he moved his family to Indonesia, helping restore areas shattered by earthquake. His experiences there would shape the rest of his life, and change the lives of millions.

Watching the desperately poor sinking under the burden of debt, Bussau realised that the same competitive forces of the marketplace that could trap people in debt could equally be used as a lever to lift people out of the poverty trap.

He began to advance small loans to budding entrepreneurs. His first — just $50 — bought a sewing machine for rice farmer Ketut Suwirn, who used it to start making and selling garments. Suwirn has gone on to build an import/export business and a fleet of taxis.

Bussau had found what he wanted to do next. Selling off his businesses he became the first of a new breed of ‘social entrepreneur,’ using his own money to set up not-for-profit finance companies that provided small loans, and a lot of hand holding, to fledgling businesses.

With American Al Whittaker, Bussau subsequently co-founded Opportunity International, which now operates across the globe and leverages assets of $500 million to create jobs for the poor.

The bare statistics of what they have achieved are staggering. Hundreds of millions of dollars lent to micro-enterprises. Over half a million new businesses established. More than a million new jobs created every year, one every 30 seconds. Over 2,500 families helped every day.

They’ve taken Opportunity International programs to more than thirty countries. They operate in Latin America, in Africa and Eastern Europe and have recently set up a program in China. They have a successful project in North Korea. In India a new $100 million project will help over a million desperately poor people into paid work this year.

They also run programs here in Australia. A three-year pilot, aimed at assisting indigenous people and funded by the previous government, was scrapped when the pilot was completed but Bussau has since formed a private company to carry on the work. Funded by a few philanthropists it’s running successfully.

Despite the success of his micro-enterprise programs, Bussau has also been castigated and condemned. The criticism is somewhat muted these days but it’s still there.

“When I started this off thirty years ago, I was the black sheep. I was criticised. I was ostracised. I was condemned. Because I wasn’t giving it [money] away.”

“I was saying the Robin Hood approach doesn’t work anymore. I dared to say that wealth creation was the answer, not wealth redistribution.

“And then of course, we got criticised for charging the poor interest”.

It’s this concept of a “…charity that doesn’t give anything away” that upsets some traditionalists. Opportunity International doesn’t hand out money as aid or gifts. It makes loans at market rates, takes collateral over assets. It insists on a business plan.

“Our goal is to create jobs for the poorest of the poor. It’s ridiculous to isolate the marketplace, quarantine it, and say that it’s ‘dirty,’ that we shouldn’t get involved in that if you want to help the poor. If they’re going to compete in a real market environment, they have to pay the same cost of capital as their competitor, otherwise you’re subsidising them.

“We don’t give loans to just anybody. We give loans to people who already have a small business, who are already entrepreneurs. They need capital to grow it and to create jobs for others.

“The vehicle, the mechanism, is the entrepreneur. That entrepreneur has to produce a business plan. Sometimes it might only be five lines but that business plan has to project that it is going to create a job for somebody.

“We want to economically empower people.”

He points to Opportunity International’s experience in Aceh following the Boxing Day Tsunami to illustrate how much more effective his methods can be than conventional disaster relief.

“The model I used there is the model I’ve used in floods and earthquakes and every other disaster I’ve been involved in. You go in and assess the situation.

“There was obviously a lot of stuff that could be recycled. So we set up a recycling plant. I set up a company that provides building products.”

“We took out contracts with the Red Cross and Habitats for Humanity, with five different organisations that had raised funds to build houses. But they didn’t have bricks, they didn’t have doors, they didn’t have windows or roof tiles. I just set up an infrastructure where we can provide those to the not-for-profit organisations”.

The Aceh initiative pulled tonnes of materials from the mud and rubble, converted it into windows and doors and useable roofing iron and sold it to the aid agencies.

“Sometimes you have to start off with charity. If there’s a disaster and everybody’s houses have been blown away then you have to start by giving people food and clothing and shelter.

“But charity in itself creates what I call a dependency addiction. Somehow we have to break that.

“We gave hundreds of people jobs. We gave them an income so we got them off the dependency addiction. They could provide for their families straight away.”

Although Bussau has stepped back from his full time role at Opportunity International he remains on the Board and provides consultancy services. He also uses his private Maranatha Trust to develop and set up innovative programs to aid the poor.

In 2001 he was awarded the AM for services to international development. In 2003 he became the first social entrepreneur to be inducted into the World Entrepreneur of the Year Academy.

He hopes that his profile as Senior Australian of the Year may help him convince people that the ‘marketplace’ is not necessarily bad, but can also be a powerful force for good.

“The marketplace has tremendous power to restore people who are in poverty and to reconcile and bring about healing to communities.”

Bussau once said that he thought the good fortune and personal satisfaction he has enjoyed came from a caring God, and his good fortune meant that his Creator was entitled to expect “…a return on his investment.”

By any reasonable measure his selfless work over the last three decades and more has produced a healthy dividend, but, at 67, he’s still looking to improve the return.

“I find I’m in a new season of my life. I get more done and achieve more by investing in others now. I sow into the lives of others and equip them to take over things. I’m growing fruit on other people’s trees.”