“I submitted my retirement papers on April 1, 2012, at age 60,” Bonhag said. “That was the easiest part in the entire process. The difficult part was trying to map out my plans for the next roughly 25 years of life.”

And map them out he did. Since retiring in 2012, Bonhag has become a certified, licensed EMT and a member of the Red Cross Disaster Health Services (DHS) team. He also earned an associate’s degree in health information technology from Brookdale Community College in New Jersey and has been a volunteer at the Monmouth County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MCSPCA).

The common thread woven through Bonhag’s life as a retiree has been service to those in need—whether it’s during a post-disaster deployment or socializing puppies at the MCSPCA. In 2018, as a member of the DHS team, he was deployed to California to lend support to victims of the wildfires. One of the fires, the Camp fire, ravaged Paradise, California, claiming 85 lives, displacing nearly 50,000 people, and burning about 11,000 homes to the ground. At one point, it was estimated to be the deadliest, most expensive fire in California history—before this year’s wildfires.

“Deployments are emotional challenges because you’re seeing people who have lost everything, everything,” Bonhag said. “The Camp fire … destroyed the entire town, [19,000] buildings were gone. Think about that.”

For the Camp fire, Bonhag was assigned to work in the family dormitory at a shelter at Chico Fairgrounds in nearby Chico, California. He worked alongside a nurse from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., helping roughly 110 families “living on cots with everything they own … right next to them or underneath the cot.” He said he was blown away by the donations that came in—not just for the families but for animals, too: food, treats, and sweaters for dogs and cats.

“It was just amazing,” he said. “It touched my heart because it crossed what I do with the SPCA with what I do with the Red Cross.”

So far this year, Bonhag has deployed three times: to Mississippi in the wake of tornadoes, to Michigan after a dam collapse caused flooding, and to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, when Tropical Storm Isaias prompted evacuations. Though he’s been asked to redeploy to California and Louisiana, Bonhag is taking some time closer to home, acting as what he calls a “utility player” for the Red Cross, working as a fiscal reviewer, an instructor, and a DHS team lead for Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.

He’s also doing “virtual deployments,” during which he can lend support to 50 to 60 people daily. On the ground or on Zoom, helping people and hearing their stories keeps Bonhag going. “People, they get to know you,” he said, “and they get to tell you their stories.”

Blockchain, a newly developed, incorruptible digital ledger system, has the potential to solve this problem, said researchers and experts at a daylong conference on Nov. 10. at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.

“We all know that global complex emergencies today are riddled with immense challenges. More people than ever, since World War II, are affected by natural and manmade disasters,” said Brendan Cahill, director of Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA).

“Blockchain can have a role not only serving people who are endangered by these crises, in refugee camps or in disaster response, but also in finding new ways that allow for people to be more self-reliant and that ensure the success of long-term humanitarian projects.”

A Technology Resistant to Data Tampering

The conference brought together representatives from intergovernmental and nongovernmental agencies to share the ways they’re taking advantage of the technology, which has made possible the use of the digital currency, bitcoin. Blockchain is a chainlike technology, used for things such as ledgers, that is resistant by design to the modification of the data.

Nick Petford, Ph.D. vice chancellor at Northampton University, detailed how the security afforded by blockchain technology could make possible what he called a “Distributed Learning Ledger.” Such a tool could better capture a person’s nontraditional education experience, including work with families and friends, religious values, and life changing experiences.

Mariana Dahan, CEO of World Identity Network, said that there are two billion people globally who have no proof of who they are, with many living their entire lives with no verifiable ID. In her native Moldova, Dahan said there is hope that blockchain could be used to thwart human trafficking of children.

“If we had an electronic ledger that would record any attempt of getting a minor or an undocumented child out of the country without the consent of the parent, we would be able to secure this information and then act upon it,” she said.

Safe, Swift Transfer of Funds

In the panel, Transparency Dividend: Can Blockchains Stretch the Humanitarian Dollar Further?, Dante Disparte, CEO of Risk Cooperative, said that just as the internet introduced the world to low-friction (easier) communication, blockchain technology has made transferring of funds easier and safer. That could be useful for helping individuals who might need to evacuate an area to escape a powerful hurricane, but who don’t [readily]  have the funds to do so.

“When you introduce blockchain, you can start asking some really interesting ‘What if questions?’ What if we could provide every person who was in an evacuation zone in harm’s way, or in the line of sight of a natural disaster, a $5,000 evacuation dividend?” he said. “Every holder of a homeowner’s policy ought to have that kind of evacuation dividend. With blockchain it’s easy to geo-reference, … to get that third-party validation that we need in the insurance industry.”

Andrew Kruczkiewicz, science adviser at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said blockchain would help the Red Cross be more proactive in predicting where donors’ funds might be better directed. His organization is pursuing “impact-based forecasting” that assesses the potential impact, not just the hazard, of natural disasters. For instance, a storm might affect the entire state of New Jersey, but some areas of the state will inevitably suffer more because of sociological differences.

“If the Red Cross understands that funding is going to be a problem in a particular country or region, perhaps there are donors that are interested in trying to build resilience in that region or that country, or would like to decrease the potential impact of floods,” he said.

“Blockchain can help us to speed things up, make things faster, and add to the transparency side of monitoring and evaluation.”

In a Feb. 25 ceremony at the World Council of Church’s Ecumenical Institute in Geneva, Switzerland, IIHA executive director Brendan Cahill signed a memorandum of agreement with IFRC Secretary-General Elhadj As Sy that makes permanent the two institutions’ relationship.

The partnership will allow Fordham and the IFRC to work together on distance learning, joint training programs, symposia, research, and publications.

Cahill said the new relationship, which follows a similar one the IIHA established last month with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), is ideal because both groups share a fundamental philosophy when it comes to helping people suffering from wars, famine, and natural disasters.

IIHA expects to see an increase in the number of students from the IFRC and the JRS; in turn, Fordham alumni from programs such as the International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance will find employment with IFRC and JRS. With 190 chapters around the world, the IFRC is easily the largest single force in aid today, said Cahill.

“At the end of the day, you want humanitarian assistance really to be effective and done with dignity,” Cahill said, noting that both groups also have strong local presences in the countries they serve.

“The trend of where humanitarian aid is going is toward empowering local response. It shouldn’t be the international response to a local problem . . . but a local response to a local problem, with capacity-building from the outside, he said.