Seeing is Believing
I’m just back from an incredible visit to the Angkor Temple complex in Cambodia. It’s an area I’ve wanted to visit for some time, and I also have the added benefit of being able to see American Express philanthropic dollars at work there.
Historic preservation is one of our company’s long-standing funding areas. It isn’t hard to understand the rationale. Preserving and sustaining sites of importance means they’ll be available for future generations to experience, and hopefully they’ll use American Express travel services or credit cards along the way.
It isn’t until you’ve seen the facades with the intricate and fragile carvings of elephants, warriors, and kings that you fully grasp the importance of the sites, and the work necessary to preserve them. Or heard the school children asking how the pictures of elephants got so high up or why there are so many serpents; seen the monks paying their respects and then chatting on cell phones; and witnessed tours being given to groups in more languages than I could keep track of.
There is a massive need to continue working in the Angkor area and other places in danger of being lost to time and the elements. The World Monuments Fund (WMF) has been working at places like the Temples in Cambodia for years, and American Express is a key funder of its efforts around the world. In visiting with the Cambodia WMF team, it’s clear how hard they work to balance the massive undertaking of securing the sites, and the needs of the local community, officials, and other site experts. It truly “takes a village,” as the saying goes, to keep the work underway.
In more than 15 years of funding historic preservation, American Express has contributed millions of dollars to help preserve more than 100 iconic sites around the world, including Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Exhibition Hut in Antarctica, the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City, the Temple of Hercules in Rome, and Dalhousie Square in Calcutta.
We are now working to make sure these places from the pages of history benefit from technology in our hyper-connected world. One way is by using social media and the Web to get the word out about preservation programs and allowing people to learn about sites in need, whether they’ve visited them or not. Through these channels, we hope to bridge the past and the future so the next generation doesn’t view preservation as something just for historians or experts.
How can we help make this important topic part of the new 140-character conversation?
Judy Tenzer is vice president of the Department of Corporate Social Responsibility at American Express, a member of the Council on Foundations.
