Bill Clinton asks Dunoon’s John McAslan to oversee Haiti’s rebuild

Dunoon-born and now London-based, international architect John McAslan says he feels that it’s important to give something back. He walks the talk.

The John McAslan Family Trust is a vehicle through which the ‘giving back’ is managed. It operates across the world, preferring to work in direct collaboration with the communities is seeks to serve.

Reading about the number and geographical spread of the projects in which the Trust is involved is simultaneously humbling and inspiring.

For example, it’s in Malawi, Rwanda, Mumbai, Thailand, Mumbai, Morocco and in Haiti. There it is involved in education, in teacher training and in the development of cultural tourism to enable the island country’s economy to stretch towards sustainability.

It’s also in the UK, involved in inner city projects supporting young people and in a variety of arts development initiatives.

Universally regarded as ‘one of the good guys’, McAslan has already been invaluable in everything he, his Family Trust and his business, John McAslan + Partners (JMP) have given to Dunoon’s effort to bring back to working life a much-loved building. The Victorian Burgh Hall, is a symbol of the town’s once-upon-a-time mercantile confidence.

The John McAslan Family Trust has put £75,000 into this project – buying the building back from Fyne Homes after it was threatened with demolition in 2008, paying for immediately essential repairs such as reroofing, dealing with rot and replacing windows.

It is down to the community to  raise the funds and contribute the engagement that will – that must – eventually see the rebirth, as an arts and community cultural centre, of this symbol of a civic confidence upon which Dunoon’s regeneration depends.

One of the John McAslan Family Trust’s projects in Haiti – developing a residential teacher training centre for 600 people – works in partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton Hunter Development Initiative.

Through this close awareness of John McAslan’s ability, philanthropy and high level organisational experience in establishing development projects in poor and troubled third world contries, Bill Clinton has clearly come to respect and trust him to deliver the impossible.

President Obama has appointed former President Clinton to lead the raising of astronomical amounts of funding to see Haiti rebuilt.

It seems that McAslan’s challenge will be one of the biggest imaginable – to see rebuilt the key infrastructural elements that will support this devastated country to survival and towards recovery: homes, schools and hospitals.

Behind him is his success in designing and delivering cheap and easily-constructed schools in Malawi. Now Bill Clinton wants him to oversee similar – but earthquake-proof – structures to be erected in Haiti.

McAslan is willing but not naive. He describes the scale of the work to be done as unimaginable. He knows that it will require many years to complete and that it will only happen if individual governments and the UN really put their weight and their resources behind the effort.

It is to Scotland’s credit that, at a time of recession and in a situation where, unlike the smallest local authority, the Scottish Government has no powers of borrowing, it has nevertheless increased he amount it will spend on overseas aid this year.

Interestingly, the Dunoon from which John McAslan emerged is round the corner in Cowal from Loch Striven.

There, Clydeport (whose property portfolio and port facility is one of the earners for the billionaire, John Whittaker), has not bothered even to talk to a small rural community upon which it has foisted – on their doorsteps and for an extended period, the presence of six large container ships on cold layup.

When it comes to the corporate social responsibility that is the mark of best practice in major businesses in the 21st century – Clydeport does not even possess such a policy, never mind pay token service to observing it. It is as self-serving and greedy as its owner, the billionaire who lets the ordinary Briton cover his civic expenses in choosing to live in the tax haven of the Isle of Man.

In the most powerful of contrasts, John McAslan – personally; through his Family Trust – charitably; and through  his business – corporately, in regular pro bono contributions to the Trust’s projects; exemplifies everything that is engaged positively and altruistically in the world around him.

Haiti is fortunate to have his marriage of professional ability and experience, philanthropy and intellectual discipline at its service in the long aftermath of this disaster.

The photograph at the head of this article is of the Citadelle Laferriere near Milot in Haiti, the subject of a John McAslan Family Trust project to develop cultural tourism in that country. It is by copyright holder Rémi Kaupp andi s reproduced here under the GNU Free Documentation licence.