SAN JOSE, Calif. — Awarded the President’s Volunteer Action Award in 1983, Operation USA is a nonprofit humanitarian organization that helps disaster-stricken communities alleviate the effects of disasters, disease and endemic poverty. Since its inception in 1979, it has provided privately funded material and financial assistance to communities for relief, reconstruction and development aid.
President and CEO Richard M. Walden and a friend gathered six tons of relief supplies 35 years ago and found a jet to take them to Vietnamese Boat People in Malaysia. This constituted the first relief flight to that population, founded what was then called Operation California and earned them the President’s Volunteer Action Award from the White House in 1983. The new relief group then sent another relief airlift to Thailand, providing supplies to refugee camps along the border of Cambodia and Laos. More than a dozen major companies donated supplies, launching Operation California’s corporate in-kind programs.
On Thanksgiving Day 1979, the group flew the first international relief airlift to Cambodia since 1975. Celebrities like actress Julie Andrews sponsored the airlift to deliver famine relief after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, and the organization is notable for being the first Western aid organization that went inside Phnom Penh, Cambodia, after the overthrow of tyrannical dictator Pol Pot.
Over the next several decades and to present day, Operation USA has had productive impact all over the world, from aiding 1.5 million people displaced by the Ethiopia-Somalia war in 1981 to being the first Western relief group to fly supplies to Poland in 1982 since Soviet-controlled authorities declared martial law to sending $8 million worth of disaster response aid to Gulf Coast states after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Operation USA is exclusively privately funded. Receiving no assistance from the United States government, it has shipped upwards of $400 million worth of high-priority shelter, nutritional and medical supplies and worked in more than 100 countries since its creation in 1979. It relies solely on private donations, avoiding the usual red tape and shortcomings that accompany government funding, and has garnered frequent praise for its low overhead that contrasts to other organizations’ expensive fundraising campaigns and large internal payrolls.
Due to its prompt and effective relief programs, Operation USA often appears on top charities lists, having been named as one of Worth Magazine’s “100 Best Charities in America” along with “#1 Exclusively Privately Funded Charity” by watchdog group Charity Navigator.
The organization promotes education, health services, leadership and capacity building, income-generating activities, sustainable development and advocacy on behalf of vulnerable people. It combats the effects of system poverty by supporting communities, dedicated to rebuilding with commitment and listening to communities’ voices to determine the best way to help them. Operation USA believes in long-term projects to promote sustainable development and growth, often staying in the field after many other charities leave.
Other stand-outs in its decorated history include being part of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines in 1997 and becoming a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Operation USA has since worked to develop new approaches to land mine detection in collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and two U.S. National Laboratories. Operation USA is also known for innovating the use of 747 jets when it sent aid to famine-stricken Ethiopia in 1984 to double the aid delivered in a single shipment.
– Annie Jung
Sources: Operation USA 1, Operation USA 2, Charity Navigator
Photo: Operation USA 3