Directed and produced by Michael Coulson, ‘Giving’ is currently in active production. Shot over 7 years, the film tells the moving story of pediatrician Dr Chris Hansen and his desire, inspired by his Quaker beliefs, to help malnourished and sick children all over the world. The film examines the impact of Chis Hansen's altruism on those he helped and asks why it is we feel morally motivated to help others.
The son of a clergyman, who converted to Quakerism, Chris Hansen, who died in 2010 aged 77, followed his Quaker beliefs all his life in an effort to give back to the disadvantaged of the world. He was a volunteer for forty years, and during that time he worked with volunteer organizations at most major catastrophe sights in the world. He provided medical care to Apache Children in Arizona, worked with the Peace Corps in Turkey, at a rural health center in Mound Bayou Mississippi, where he became involved in the civil-rights movement, and for twenty years treated abused children at the Department of Youth and Family Services in Trenton, New Jersey. From his home base in New Hope Pa. he continued his travels, tending sick children in Nigeria, Vietnam, Iraq, and Haiti.
The documentary follows Dr Chris Hansen on two of his trips to Haiti where he is providing ongoing support for an orphanage and school in Port au Prince called RENMEN, run by Haitian resident Florence Thybulle. At the time of filming, Chris is soon to retire from the medical profession, and is in failing health, but has nonetheless become the major donor for the project, which provides shelter and relief to homeless children in the capital of one of the poorest countries in the Developing World. This new responsibility means Chris, aged 70, must raise funds from the Quakers in the U.S. throughout the year and then travel to a center for poor, sick or homeless children in Port Au Prince, Haiti. Through weeks spent in close in contact with Chris, the film reveals the difficulties and stresses he faces as he tries to fulfill his obligations and make a difference to the lives of the young children there. Even before the recent earthquake which devastated Port-au-Prince, children were living there in conditions of extreme poverty. In the film Chris describes how the Haitian infant mortality rate is more than ten times higher than the infant mortality rate in the U.S.
The film presents a portrait of a deeply thoughtful man who struggles through a history of depression and ill health in order to stand up and follow his beliefs. In moments of extreme stress, Chris shows another side of his personality - as a funny unconventional man who uses humor as an antidote to the suffering he constantly faces. Chris loved children and loved toys and in footage shot of Chris with his family at their home in New Hope, Pennsylvania, we see his playful character on full display as he pursues his favorite pastime of ‘rocket flying’. Chris was concerned all his life, that he wasn't doing enough. But even after being diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia he still carried out his volunteer duties at a soup kitchen in Trenton – "giving back" to the end.
Editing of a rough cut of the footage shot in Haiti and the United States is almost completed. A series of interviews have been filmed, inspired by a "pop up" Quaker meeting, of people who have been touched by Chris during his lifetime of giving. Postproduction will now continue to a final cut of the documentary, which will be presented to film festivals for screening in 2015. It is hoped the film will be shown to young people at schools and colleges as an example of what one man achieved in his lifetime and inspire them to choose a career path working for social justice – just like he did. Watching him struggling to make a difference to others, we can’t help but reflect on what we are doing with our own lives.
So far the project has received help and financial support from the Jonathan Rhoads Trust, The Obadiah Brown Fund, Friends at Haverford and Buckingham Meetings, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and from many private individuals - there is a complete list below - and the film is nearing completion. The hope is for film to be ready for distribution in 2015 but funds are still needed for post production film costs. If you would like to support the film please see the PayPal link at the bottom of the page or contact the film maker.
I was first introduced to Dr Chris Hansen when I was making a documentary for National Geographic and I heard about his medical work with children in Port-au-Prince. When I talked to him and learned he was planning another trip to a school in Port-au-Price funded by his local Quaker meeting I asked if I could join him. I suggested I could record his work and maybe make a film about him. I could see that he was not very happy about being the focus of attention, but when I suggested that I would direct my camera away from him as much as possible and towards the children, and that the resulting material might bring attention to their plight and help raise funds for the mission, he agreed to let me come along. This was to be the first of two trips with the intrepid doctor.
With a long white, a "Quaker Oats" beard and khakis, Chris is a naturally photogenic character. I trail this hymn singing, story-telling, loveable eccentric around Haiti and the resulting footage shows the foreign doctor getting into difficulties, trying to reconcile his personal and religious beliefs about "right-sharing" or giving, with the frustrations and suspicions of the people he is trying to help, particularly with Florence Thybulle, a Haitian aid worker who is the recipient of his funds and who explains to Chris her need for regular support that she can depend upon – something Chris is trying to deliver.
As I watch Chris navigate the moral twists and turns (hope, trust, guilt, disappointment) of his new role, I also begin to understand the benefits and the pitfalls which befall the individual citizen should they decide to shoulder the burden of poverty relief and medical care in the Developing World. Chris is no longer a young man and he finds that navigating the unpaved streets of Cite L'Eternal in Port-au-Prince in the blazing sun takes a toll on him. As he takes a break beneath a shady tree at his hotel, I ask him what motivates him. Is it really necessary for him to be making site visits in his seventieth year, or is he exorcising some personal guilt? He says that he, "Just tries to share a little of what he has with others".
Florence Thybulle is from a large Haitian family. She started her program in a poor area of Port Au Prince, wanting to help children in need and to create a large family around her. She has been very successful and has created a well - run safe environment for poor and abandoned children, which is a combination of orphanage and day school called RENMEN. The children's center has more than 200 children aged from birth to ten years, and she provides them with schooling and one meal daily. Florence's backyard is a place where mothers and children spend their time, sometimes waiting for a meal, and where the nurse's aide teaches the mothers about basic nutritional needs, breast-feeding and proper hygiene. There is a basic playground with only a few toys available, so the children spend their time singing, playing, and participating in social games.
I talk to Florence Thybulle about what it's like to be on the other side of the "giving business”. The children's basic needs are immense. Chris, with whom Florence has had a close and sometimes stormy five-year working relationship, tries to provide support for the clothing, bedding and food, but the money he provides arrives sporadically and Florence is frustrated and angry. I witness these frustrations boil over on my second trip to Haiti when Chris struggles to salvage the Quaker mission.
Chris has helped Marcel, a Haitian National who has worked in the USA, set up nutrition and a basic educational program for the children, with regular child health screening and treatment as well as a developmental component. Dr Sever provides immunizations when vaccines are available and affordable. Marcel does not receive any money for his work at RENMEN unless Chris sends it to Florence. I film an uncomfortable interaction between Marcel and Chris one day at the school. Marcel is voicing his frustration with the unpredictable nature of the Quaker funding and is telling Chris he is unable to keep working for nothing. Chris is pretty upset and depressed after this altercation. I could tell the responsibility was getting to him. Later, at our hotel, Chris speaks with me about how he sometimes finds it difficult to take the criticism after working to raise money for the project. It feels like he can never give enough.
BACKGROUND
Bill Clinton: Haiti’s Dilemma"The great question of this new century is whether the age of interdependence is going to be good or bad for humanity. The answer depends upon whether we in the wealthy nations spread the benefits and reduce the burdens of the modern world, on whether the poor nations enact the changes necessary to make progress possible, and on whether we all can develop a level of consciousness high enough to understand our obligations and responsibilities to each other. We are all going to have to change."
Chris Hansen MD: In The Name Of The Children"Haiti's health statistics help illustrate what that overused word "poverty," actually means to the people living there. The average Haitian life expectancy is about fifty years, compared to seventy-seven in the U.S. The Haitian infant mortality rate is seventy-five deaths per thousand live births, more than ten times higher than the infant mortality rate in the U.S. Only about half the Haitian households have access to wells or improved water sources and only about half the Haitian population can read and write. And yet - here is the grace - I saw children from homes without running water walking proudly to school, wearing immaculately clean, crisply ironed uniforms. I couldn't figure out how the parents did it. Haiti's that kind of place, tragic and exasperating, but deeply spiritual and full of surprises."
HAITI: BRIEF HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Over 200 hundred years ago, Haiti celebrated its independence from Colonial rule. As the clock struck midnight, Haitians were dancing in the streets, celebrating the birth of the world's 1st nation of freed slaves, justly proud to be part of an island community with such a glorious history.
Unfortunately Haiti's spectacular achievement struck such fear into its former Colonial masters, who foresaw revolution spreading to other colonies in the area, that the new Black Nation was soon isolated from the western world. It's arguable that over the centuries since the revolution, Haiti has been systematically punished by French, British and American powers, for daring to break free from a system beneficial to their global economies. Today, in a new age of global economics, and in the wake of the enormous and catastrophic disaster of the recent earthquake, Haiti's future is being decided by the same countries that once ruled and then abandoned it. Hopefully this time things will be different and the current outpouring of sympathy and generosity from all parts of the world will help create a new sustainable future for the people of Haiti.
New Jersey Times Editorial: A champion for children, Monday, February 15, 2010
On this day reserved for celebrating the achievements of presidents, we pause to salute Dr. Christian M. Hansen Jr., a pediatrician whose contributions to public health have made differences in Trenton and as far away as Africa. The Camden native, who was a resident of New Hope, Pa., died Feb. 3, at age 77. "I have no other view than to promote the public good, and am unambitious of honors," George Washington once said. Dr. Hansen was of a similar mind in his promotion of the public good as an advocate for the Division of Youth and Family Services and a seemingly endless number of short medical missions to global crisis spots, including Nigeria, Vietnam, Iraq, Armenia, Rwanda, Kosovo and Haiti. "He definitely cared so much about children, and he cared about people on a global scale and wanted to do as much as he could to help," said his daughter, Amy Hansen. "He never thought he did enough. He definitely inspired a lot of people to think in a much bigger way about helping others and to have an open heart."
Like Abraham Lincoln, who "never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day," Dr. Hansen's life was characterized by constant practice of doing the right thing. He helped establish the Henry J. Austin Health Center in 1969, spent Thanksgiving and Christmas mornings distributing turkey dinners to public housing residents, and volunteered, after his retirement, at the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, as Staff Writer Meir Rinde recounted last week. He was a tutor there, but rolled up his sleeves to help in any and every way he could.
Prior to his work in Trenton, Dr. Hansen cared for children at the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Arizona, volunteered with the Peace Corps in Ankara, Turkey, then rejoined the health service, first in South Dakota and then in the Mississippi Delta. He helped open the Tufts Delta Health Center in 1965, working in the poor, predominantly black town of Mound Bayou during a period of tense race relations. He eventually joined the faculty of Rutgers Medical School, and later worked for the state, taking frequent breaks to travel to war zones around the world.
Dr. Hansen's battles with injustice, malnutrition, abuse and neglect are recalled in his book "In the Name of the Children." He describes working in some of the poorest countries of the world amid overwhelming challenges and comes to this conclusion: "If we were to take as literal truth the words of our founding fathers, that all men are created equal, we would start being very, very concerned about our effects on others, around the world and at home. And we'd be more concerned about the kids."
Demonstrating concern for others seems like an excellent way of observing this Presidents Day and of celebrating Dr. Hansen's life.
We have received many generous offers of support from people moved by Chris Hansen's life spent giving back to others. But we still need your help to finish filming and editing the film. If you would like to support the film, please donate now via PayPal link above. If you would like to follow the production please go the GIVING Facebook page or Michael's GIVING blog.
Contact the filmmaker at: michaelc@threehumansinc.com or at the address or telephone number below. With their permission all donors to the documentary will be credited in the film titles and press releases.
Production Address:
Three Humans Inc 221 East 78th Street, Suite 3F New York, NY 10075-1217 USA
Telephone:
917 622 6103
Director/Producer
Michael Coulson
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The filmmaker thanks the following for their support for GIVING:
John Bailey
Julie Barnes
Daniel Bernstein
Obadiah Brown Benevolent Fund
Buckingham Friends
Pam Caprio
Jeffrey Chong
John Fairman
Jack H. Geiger MD MSciHyg
Jaimie Goralnick
Alix Hansen
Annsi Stephano
Amy Hansen
Mark Canright
Jonathan Hansen
Nathaniel Hansen
Max Hansen
Anne Hansen MD,MPH
Haverford Friends
Nile Lanning
Jill and Steve McDonnell
Wendy Matthews
Dennis McDonald
Dennis Micai
Joan Manhardt
Bethann Morgan
John Pack
Jonathan E. Rhoads Trust
Grace and Jonathan Scott
Dr Robert Smith
Kim and Breck Taylor
Carol Waltz
Roger Warner
Alexandra Warren
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