Silver Spring, Maryland -- John Arthur, who has lived and worked in the United Kingdom, for almost 40 years, has been awarded the OBE, Officer of the British Empire, in The Queen's Birthday Honors List. The award is in recognition of his involvement in international humanitarian work.

From 1990-2001, "Mr Fix It," as he became known, served as the Executive Director of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, ADRA, in Trans Europe. From the agency's office in St Albans, Arthur, who was born profoundly hearing-impaired, was responsible for coordinating millions of dollars in fund raising, dispatching emergency aid supplies, and initiating development projects throughout Europe, the Middle East, and N.E. Africa.

Commenting on the award, Arthur says, "It's a tremendous honor. I would have never expected this in a thousand years. But it is a tribute to the unflagging professional team of ADRA workers that I was connected to, and the solid support that we received from church members and the donor community."

Frequently, Arthur faced risk when, with several willing volunteers from the area; he delivered huge amounts of aid into Albania, Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia, at the height of the civil war in the Balkans.

When the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, was cut off from the outside world for three years, ADRA was a major player in distributing food, clothing, medicines and hospital supplies to thousands of desperate people. The agency even operated the city's Post Office during the darkest days of the conflict. Two of its 103 volunteers were killed in action.

Schoolchildren, moved by the plight of so many innocent victims of war, rallied to the cause and raised many thousands of dollars. Local students will recall Arthur, accompanied by BBC TV News Correspondent, Bill Hamilton, visiting their schools pleading for help, particularly for the children of Albania where the infant mortality rate was more than four times higher than the rest of Europe and where some babies were dying, weighing a pound less at six months than when they were born.

Hamilton and Arthur first met in Tirana, Albania's capital, where Hamilton was working on a story about the plight of Albanians surviving after the fall of Communism. As a result of the school visits, children gave their own pocket money as well as raising community funds. ADRA had sufficient funding to buy life-saving ventilators for each of the country's maternity hospitals.

"I couldn't believe how people lived," Hamilton explains. "Children lined up for hours to get a loaf of bread.
Then they carried them like bars of gold, which they were at that time.
Hospitals didn't have one working incubator, and most children were born prematurely because their mothers were malnourished I felt as if it was a hopeless situation, but we had to do something to help. The first foreign agency to arrive in Albania was ADRA, led by John Arthur, which is quite something.

"John is a doer. I was the communicator of the message, realizing how powerful television images can be. This award is also recognition of what ADRA means in the world. It's a boost to the hundreds of country directors and staff, as well as the young people who volunteer in some of the worst places in the world. This award is also recognition for their efforts,"
Hamilton said.

At the height of the Kosovo crisis, ADRA provided 35,000 meals each day to the homeless, rebuilt 400 schools, vaccinated 40,000 cattle, and cleaned 2,000 water wells, which had been seriously polluted. The total value of this intervention alone was in the region of $36 million. Arthur's role with the agency has also taken him to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, and Sudan. It was there that he had an amazing escape when local tribes people wielding Kalashnikovs attacked the vehicle in which he was travelling.

Now retired, Arthur lives in the United Kingdom with his wife, Ruth, a former Deputy Head of Tanners Wood School in Abbots Langley. They have two children Christine, Managing Director of a Birmingham Public Relations Company, and Andrew, a computer systems consultant.

Arthur also volunteers a few hours a month as the honorary secretary of the St Albans-based Kashmir Deaf Children's Trust, KADECT, charity, which has been established to help deaf children in Kashmir.

"I saw a lot of progress in Albania at that time," Arthur says. "We put a lot of ventilators into hospitals and they saved the lives of babies. We took out a lot of clothing and food and it helped to enhance the quality of life for people. We delivered textbooks to school children and improved school buildings. Many of the schools had no glass in the windows and the kids were shivering to death. What we did made a definite difference in the lives of people.
The great thing about ADRA is that they're not here today and gone tomorrow.
ADRA is there as long as the needs exist."

Additional information about ADRA can be found at www.adra.org.