Our Voices Together: Fighting Terrorism With Compassion

Among the charities begun by friends and family members in honor of the loved ones they lost on September 11,

Our Voices Together is a relative newcomer. After all, the group didn’t officially get its start until a year ago.

There’s a good reason for that, explains its founder, C. Eugene Steuerle, widower of Norma Steuerle, a family therapist who died aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it hit the Pentagon. It took a while to create a plan to execute the new charity’s mission: to build a network of people who respond to terrorism by making a difference in the world.

“Compassionate outreach is really an alternative to what the terrorists are doing,” says Mr. Steuerle, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, in Washington, who created the new charity using the nearly $2-million he received from the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. (The group also solicits donations on its Web site.) “That was the general theme, but figuring out how to pull it off took a lot of thought.”

He also wanted to ensure that he had the right people involved in the organization from the beginning, particularly the friends and families of other September 11 victims.

Mr. Steuerle’s insistence on including people who had lost someone in the terrorist attacks — the charity’s 24-member advisory board includes more than a dozen such people — gets to the heart of the group’s mission, says Marianne Scott, executive director of the Washington group.

“The family’s vision wasn’t to invent something new but to help support individuals and families who were already responding,” says Ms. Scott. “Many of the board members had already started their own 9/11 charities. This is a way to showcase the generous side of the United States.”

Board members are urged to select international projects in honor of their friends and relatives who died.

Our Voices Together then promotes the projects and encourages the general public to donate to them. For example, Eric Gardner, a board member whose brother died at the World Trade Center, established a fund in his brother’s name to provide scholarships to college students participating in Habitat for Humanity International’s Global Village program in South and Central America.

The organization also operates an online site where it encourages people to support charities specifically chosen by September 11 friends and families.

Donors are asked to give gifts that benefit specific regions of the world, or particular causes: women, children, education, or the environment. On Mother’s Day, the charity suggested that families honor their mothers not with flowers or candy but by making donations for literacy lessons or buying garden seeds for mothers in impoverished countries.

Next month, on September 11, the charity will branch out further, organizing speaking events on more than a dozen college campuses across the country, on the topic of building a safer, more compassionate world.

While Mr. Steuerle says he is pleased with his new charity’s progress so far, he has no illusions about the future.

“There’s always a gamble involved when you start a charity. It’s kind of like a small business,” says Mr. Steuerle, a former deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury who has studied nonprofit organizations. “I’m well aware of the rise and fall of many charities.”