“Just do it” was a phrase often uttered by Jonathan Crown. He said it to set up a charity to help thousands of Ethiopian children born with a cleft lip or palate. The idea for Project Harar came to Crown on a hot, dusty afternoon in 2000 in Ethiopia. Just near the market of Harar, he was approached by a beggar wearing a veil. The boy in the veil, 14-year-old Jemal, who displayed symptoms of noma, a flesh-eating gangrene which attacks severely malnourished children, was found after Crown’s return to London. By 2004 he saw the solution as surgery done in Ethiopia. He also had a specific charitable focus: operations for children with a cleft lip or palate. Until Crown began Project Harar, little help was available. Nothing, however, deterred Crown.
Mark McGurk, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon from London once a year brings a team of medical volunteers to Ethiopian hospitals. In partnership with local doctors, they operate on about 50 people a year with severe facial disfigurements. “If we ran out of drugs, he’d say ‘leave it to me’ and would source them,” Professor McGurk said. Crown did much initial fundraising in person; including organising annual gala dinners at London hotels, and inviting guests to pledge the modest cost of cleft operations in Ethiopia.
More than 8,000 children have now been helped by Project Harar. Jonathan Crown, charity founder, was born on September 16, 1964. He died on September 19, 2020, aged 56.
