Back from Sudan, brother and sister Brian Steidle and Gretchen Steidle Wallace Tu'01 reported on the crisis in the Darfur region and promoted volunteerism Friday as part of the Tucker Foundation's Sophomore Summer Opening Address. Both Steidle, a former captain with the U.S. Marine Corps, and Wallace, founder of the non-governmental organization Global Grassroots, urged attendees to react to the wrongs they see in the world, using the Sudanese genocide as an example.
Steidle went to Darfur in September 2004 as a U.S. representative to the African Union's peacekeeping mission there, allowed only to report on violations of a cease-fire. Armed with a camera, pen and pad, Steidle photographed injuries and evidence of other atrocities committed by the Janjaweed, a government-sponsored Arab militia.
During the speeches, a slide show displayed the more viewable of Steidle's photographs, images including looted stores, a government soldier burning a food supply, helicopters scorching villages and refugees staring into his camera. The photographs, he said, were difficult to take.
"I don't know how to describe most of them -- things you shouldn't see," he said.
Steidle then talked with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who wanted to write about the relatively unknown crisis in Darfur. It was then when Steidle decided to release the photographs, a move he termed "a difficult decision." Despite violating his contract and exposing himself to backlash, he released his photographs, the first ones exposing genocide in Darfur.
Steidle questioned the progress made toward ending the violence.
"I don't know if I've made any difference," he said. "People are still dying in Darfur. Villages are still being destroyed."
Steidle's sister recounted telephone calls from her brother describing the atrocities.
"I heard the most horrific stories about the impact of the Darfur crisis on women," Wallace said, noting the proliferation of rape.
No stranger to international aid work, Wallace spent a month living near Darfur refugee camps in Chad and traveled to Rwanda to commemorate the 12th anniversary of genocide in that country.
While Steidle spent his time describing the crisis in Darfur, Wallace used her speech to emphasize the importance of people whom she termed "social entrepreneurs" -- those who approach social problems creatively and seek to change the system that causes them.
Steidle cited three such individuals: a man who built settlements for homeless lepers in Nigeria, a woman in South Africa who founded a local sexual violence support group and a teacher in Darfur who set up libraries at refugee camps.
She concluded by urging the audience to become inspired by these examples, take advantage of educational opportunities, find a passion, participate politically and refuse to give up.
Before earning her Masters in Business Administration from the Tuck School of Business in 2001, Wallace graduated from the University of Virginia and then went on to work for an investment banking firm that specialized in development in poor countries. While at Tuck, she founded the Allwin Initiative for Corporate Citizenship, aimed at promoting corporate responsibility and ethics. She started the non-profit organization Global Grassroots, which seeks to promote women's rights and combat poverty in the third world, and she is in the process of completing a documentary film illustrating the plight of female refugees who fled Darfur.
Her brother, after graduating from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1999, joined the United States Marine Corps and completed his service in 2003. He scanned the internet for a job that interested him, and after touring the world with the Marines, he looked beyond desk jobs.
"I don't know where the trigger is on the stapler," he quipped.
Steidle applied for a position with the Joint Military Commission in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan and received his acceptance and plane tickets within days. After working his way up to Senior Operations Officer, he moved west in Sudan to work for the African Union in Darfur. In March 2005 he testified in Congress and is now writing a book to be published this spring about his experiences in Sudan.
