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When a tsunami struck Indonesia and other Indian Ocean nations the day after Christmas in 2004, the deadly wave unleashed a tsunami of its own: A tsunami of compassion.
Don Eberly was trying to ride the compassion tsunami, coordinating private-sector aid in the wake of the devastation. In the United States alone, businesses, nonprofits and individuals gave more than $2 billion for tsunami victims — more than three times what the U.S. government contributed.
What Eberly saw then confirmed trends that he thought he'd begun to see through three previous years in the Bush administration.
"Everywhere I went in the developing world I found the most fascinating people — I call them wildcatters — who are out on the frontiers of development, promoting some creative solution to housing, food production, energy or health," Eberly said.
 Author Don Eberly sees opportunities worldwide for social entrepreneurs.
"I find it amazing. It is like an entirely new frontier. People are realizing there actually are solutions."Eberly's observations crystallized into a new book, "The Rise of Global Civil Society: Building Communities and Nations from the Bottom Up," which will be released later this month from Encounter Books.
The East Hempfield Township man, who once described himself as a social entrepreneur, is writing about the ways other social entrepreneurs are changing the world.
"My thesis is that the private sector — meaning individuals, businesses, nonprofits, congregations and a host of other private organizations — are eclipsing the government and doing things that governments can't do," he said.
"This was never before the case in history."
Global opportunities
For people on both the left and right ends of the ideological spectrum, globalization is a dirty word.
Eberly isn't so sure.
"I am not for or against globalization," he said. "It is like the weather; it is reality."
But there are ways in which forces of globalization are enabling nonprofit groups and profit-making corporations to fix some of the most intractable problems of developing nations.
It's that side of globalization that Eberly, now a consultant on international development and business projects, documents in "The Rise of Global Civil Society."
"There are some real down sides to globalization, and we are seeing the effects on our economy. I don't deny that, and it concerns me as much as the next guy," he said.
"But if there is an up side, it is that like never before, resources and concepts that make huge differences in people's lives can be gotten to the remotest places on earth. And in many cases I am not talking about money; I am talking about new techniques and ideas for building institutions and solving problems."
From poverty to hunger to disease to joblessness to violence, "The Rise of Global Civil Society" contends, innovative solutions are bubbling up.
A key suggestion in the book is that much of this transformation is coming apart from government, through the private sector.
"Today, the entire emphasis is on generating opportunity through enterprise and solving problems through the private sector," Eberly said. "Even government is slowly coming around to appreciating the unlimited power of the private sector. The talk everywhere is about the private sector and growth-based approaches to poverty reduction.
"… The most important thing for people to appreciate is that 20 years ago, 70 percent of all assistance to the world came from the government; today, 85 percent is private. That is a stunning reversal."
The tsunami relief effort, which Eberly helped to head at the State Department, was a prime example of "global civil society" at work.
"Within days, if not hours, of the event, the entire world came alive with private donations," he said. "U.S donations exceeded $2 billion, over three times what the government offered.
Total disaster aid was $11 billion.
"And the most amazing thing was to see the private relief effort on the ground in Indonesia: today, the private sector is nimble-footed and just as smart and fast as the government in getting things done, if not more so," he added.
"And by the way, the opinion of America in Indonesia, the most Muslim nation on earth, went from almost 70 percent negative to over 60 percent positive — all because of what the American people did."
That's why the book contends that compassion is America's "most consequential" export.
"Nothing — nothing — is doing more good for our reputation abroad," he said. "While our government proves again and again to be rather clumsy, the great outflow of private compassion from our borders to the needy is promoting a tremendous amount of goodwill.
"This is a story the American people don't know about and should be told."
Privatizing the future?
Eberly hopes his book will begin to tell the story, along with his argument that the private sector is poised to "dominate the future."
Average Americans, he noted, are "now personally exporting the norms of democracy and problem-solving like they could never have imagined, often without even leaving home," thanks to the reach of the Internet.
And corporations, sometimes seen as the bad guys of globalization, are "making an unappreciated contribution to raising legal and ethical standards, to rule of law, curbing corruption and expanding the practice of philanthropy everywhere in the world," he argued.
The book notes, "Merck & Co., in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is donating two of its antiretroviral (ARV) medicines to Botswana. Abbott Laboratories is modernizing hospitals in Africa. JPMorgan Chase is working on developing homes for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS."
Before he joined the Bush White House as deputy director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, Eberly headed the Civil Society Project, whose mission was to rebuild the nongovernmental sector, or "voluntary social institutions."
During five years in the Bush administration, he said, "it occurred to me with every passing year that something big was going on internationally. In my travels as well as official duties at home, I witnessed an amazing level of engagement by private sector organizations, not just in providing traditional relief, but using technology and innovation to solve problems."
Government won't become irrelevant, he said, but "civil society" will grow in relevance.
"When it comes to tackling problems of poverty, government certainly has a lot of resources to throw at the problem, but it doesn't begin to match the creative power of the private sector."
"The Rise of Global Civil Society," with a list price of $25.95, will be in bookstores in late February but can be pre-ordered through Amazon.com. The publisher, Encounter, will put a "significant investment" into advertising and a national tour.
Eberly said he wrote the book after realizing "that the world was changing dramatically in ways that weren't being captured at all, given the media's preoccupation with war and terrorism.
"There's a lot of bad news, and I don't sugarcoat the realities, but what is also true is that there is an upside to globalization: We are now in a stronger position than ever to make a dent in some of the world's toughest problems."
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