Gospel for Asia – Page 22 – Warren Throckmorton

Gospel for Asia: Ganga River Project Donation Raises Questions About Priorities and Promises

I reported last week that K.P. Yohannan met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In the meeting, Yohannan gave 1 crore rupees (just shy of $150,000) to the Ganga Cleanliness Project.
Compared to the millions still banked in India, $15ok isn’t a large sum.
Still, I wonder if donors intended those funds to help save the Ganga River. I also wonder what that money could have done for people.
While I was wondering, I thought of a story I read awhile back on the GFA website. The story of Lakshimi and her sister goes like this:

Nine-year-old Lakshmi works in a factory as a cigarette roller. She tells her sister’s story:

My sister is ten years old. Every morning at seven she goes to the bonded labor man, and every night at nine she comes home. He treats her badly; he hits her if he thinks she is working slowly or if she talks to the other children, he yells at her, he comes looking for her if she is sick and cannot go to work. I feel this is very difficult for her.
I don’t care about school or playing. I don’t care about any of that. All I want is to bring my sister home from the bonded labor man. For 600 rupees I can bring her home—that is our only chance to get her back.
We don’t have 600 rupees…we will never have 600 rupees [the equivalent of U.S.$14].

This story and another one I will tell below break my heart.
If the story of Lakshmi is true, nearly 11,000 kids could be rescued with a Ganga River sized donation. There is something sad and sickening about K.P. Yohannan currying favor with the Prime Minister while GFA offices all over the world beg for more money to help poor children.
The other story comes from an Indian observer of the Bridge of Hope program. A young elementary school aged boy named Sayaan Ali needed treatment for a kidney stone. He was a Bridge of Hope kid. His parents were not able to afford this treatment (about $1000 USD) so they requested help from their Bridge of Hope center and the local Believers’ Church diocese. Tragically, the Diocese failed to act on the request and the boy wasted away until he recently died a painful death. There was no bridge of hope for this young boy. His parents are devastated and the Prime Minister has another $150k for the Ganga River.
Believers’ Church and K.P. Yohannan own several state of the art hospitals which could have provided the care. These hospitals have been touted as means to minister to poor children like Sayaan. If only Sayaan and Lakshmi were important politicians, perhaps the church would have noticed.
Money really isn’t the issue for K.P. Yohannan and Believers’ Church. According to publicly available Indian government documents, GFA and ministry partners have just over $74-million sitting in bank accounts.
Shame on GFA and Believers Church for their photo ops with power. I call on K.P. Yohannan to answer for his use of donor funds and stop hiding behind his nameless board of directors.

In Hamilton Spectator Gospel for Asia Story, Canadian Director Contradicts GFA-US Executive

Steve Buist reporter for the Hamilton Spectator has written a major expose’ of Gospel for Asia. Published today, a shorter version will also appear in the Toronto paper tomorrow. The headquarters for GFA-Canada is in Hamilton so the story is a local and national one there.
In the story, GFA-Canada Director Pat Emerick denies one of the first claims told to me by GFA-US COO David Carroll. Emerick denied that Canadian donations had been lumped together with American donations:

“There has been no mingling of funds and field partners can absolutely account for the originating source of all deposits,” Emerick stated.

“All funds sent to the field have been accounted for separately in annual reports to the respective international boards as well as according to national accounting standards in the receiving countries,” Emerick stated.

He is not exactly answering the question. The fact is that Canadian funds were not reported to the Indian Home Ministry as coming from Canada. In May 2015, Carroll told me that Canadian funds were lumped in with American funds. He said there was no requirement for them to be reported separately.

The Canadian funds were combined with U.S. funds by our auditor in India for various accounting reasons. There is no requirement that they be reported separately.

Buist’s assessment is that the funds were combined without proper reporting.

Meanwhile, Gospel for Asia officials in the U.S. told an American evangelical financial accountability group last summer the charity didn’t exert any control over its Indian affiliates and how they spend the money.

Taken together, it means Canadian donations were lumped in with the American donations sent to India but the American charity didn’t exercise any control over the Indian affiliates receiving the money.

This would appear to be in violation of the CRA’s rules that state the Canadian charity must maintain control and direction of its donations and be able to account for how they have been spent, even when done through an intermediary.

Buist covers the waterfront and cites Bruce Morrison and me on a variety of financial matters. The entire class action suit is embedded online.
Readers of this blog will recognize much of the facts but Buist does a very fine job of weaving it all together in one place.

K.P. Yohannan Meets With Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Donates $150k to Ganga Clean Up Project

Yes, indeed. K.P. Yohannan, defendent in a RICO lawsuit and leader of a charity found to be in violation of federal law, met with the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi earlier this week.

I suspect PM Modi is projecting an accepting of all faiths, which is of course, a good thing. However, I wonder if he realizes that Yohannan’s organization has lost membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, the Independent Charities of America, the National Religious Broadcasters and was forbidden from soliciting donations from federal government employees.
One reason for the meeting was for Yohannan to donate $150k to the “Ganga cleanliness campaign.”

Dr. K. P. Yohannan, Metropolitan Bishop of Believers Church, Kerala along with a delegation called on Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, today. Dr. Yohannan donated Rs. 1 crore towards Ganga cleanliness campaign. Prof. P.J. Kurien, Deputy Chairman, Rajya Sabha was also present on the occasion.

I wonder where the $150,000 came from.
You can read more about the Ganga project here.

The aims and objectives of NMCG is to accomplish the mandate of National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) of
1.To ensure effective abatement of pollution and rejuvenation of the river Ganga by adopting a river basin approach to promote inter-sectoral co-ordination for comprehensive planning and management and
2.To maintain minimum ecological flows in the river Ganga with the aim of ensuring water quality and environmentally sustainable development.

The twitter crowd doesn’t appear to be glowing in praise of Modi for the meeting.\

Can You Get Your Money Back From Gospel for Asia?

Wills Point GFA Chapel — GFA’s Chapel in Wills Point, TX, source: HH Architects website

One former donor to Gospel for Asia has been so concerned about being a good steward that the donor tried to get payment stopped on a credit card used to send payments to GFA. It appears that the card company has been challenging GFA over those charges.
The donor does not want to be identified but has provided evidence of the charges.
The donor disputed the last three charges to the card and this week was credited for one month’s charges. The card company is still disputing the other charges.
According to my source, a representative at the company said GFA did not provide documentation to verify that funds were used for the designated purpose. Instead, GFA gave the card company a letter sent to the card holder in 2014. The letter reminded the card holder that a recurrent payment had been set up to support GFA causes.
The representative told my source that a second disputed case had been filed by another donor against GFA this week.

Gospel for Asia's Christian Astroturf

In the past, Gospel for Asia has spent donor money on “reputation management” — using fake accounts to flood social media with positive information about GFA. It appears they are at it again. On twitter, the image below is the result of a search for GFA.

The glam photos, odd name combos and exact same message give away the spam. I am not sure of the value of these tweets since the accounts are quite small. In any case, someone is reporting lots of social media traffic which is ultimately fake.
The following accounts also appear to be fake.

The format is all the same (there are dozens of these) and they all hope to see me around. I doubt it. They link to blogs which are either fake addresses or to blogs which have no entries.
We know GFA has contracted with Reputation Management Consultants in the past to shore up GFA’s image. Instead of a grassroots uprising of donors defending GFA, it appears that more donor money is going to Christian astroturf.