UNDP Ukraine head Douglas Gardner marks Kiev farewell with “A Closer Walk”

Lunch with ... outgoing UNDP head Douglas Gardner
By Emily Urquhart, Kyiv Post Staff Writer
Apr 6, 2004


Outgoing head of the United Nations Development Programme in Ukraine Douglas Gardner tends always to be on the run, promoting the UNDP’s causes, such as HIV awareness.

UN official Douglas Gardner had one thing to do before he and his family left Kyiv for Phnom Penh, Cambodia: attend a movie premiere.

It wasn’t any film that would mark Gardner’s farewell to the city where he had spent the last four years of his life. It was the AIDS documentary “A Closer Walk,” by U.S. filmmaker Robert Bilheimer. The Academy Award-nominated director had his film premiere here April 5.

The premiere and accompanying gala were a fitting farewell for Gardner, since AIDS is an issue that has deeply concerned the UN Development Programme, of which Gardner has been the representative.

“My approach from day one is that Ukraine has a chance to make history,” Gardner said over lunch at Le Grand Cafe in late March. “It can head off an epidemic.”

Gardner believes that “A Closer Walk” will enhance communication about AIDS throughout Ukraine, as the documentary will be made available to any educational group or NGO that requests a copy.

“One of my hopes with the showing of this film is that it will reach people on the personal level,” Gardner said.

He is careful not to use numbers when speaking about HIV/AIDS. He refers to people and families instead of figures and percentages.

Gardner first saw the film in June 2003, at a dinner in Washington hosted by the Global Business Council on HIV/AIDS. It was a fancy affair held in the Kennedy Center with about 400 people in attendance, among them Colin Powell, John Kerry and actress Glenn Close. Close spoke at the event, promoting “A Closer Walk” and telling the room full of America’s elite that “if you watch this film it will change your life.”

It was a strong statement, but back in Kyiv, when Gardner watched the film with his staff at the UNDP, he understood what Close meant.

He immediately telephoned Bilheimer and suggested adding Russian and Ukrainian subtitles to the documentary and distributing it throughout Ukraine. Bilheimer agreed. The filmmaker came to Ukraine for the premiere and hosted a seminar with film students and journalists the following day.

Gardner, 52, speaks like a well-honed politician. He was an engaging lunch partner, who held eye contact and spoke with passion about everything from his two daughters, aged six and nine, to his work with the Chernobyl Recovery and Development Programme. For lunch, he ordered tomato and mozzarella salad and whitefish on rice from the business menu (Hr 78). Gardner blended with the clientele at Le Grand Cafe, mostly international businessmen in their 40s and 50s wearing dark suits and colorful ties. The difference, though, was that Gardner wasn’t talking about mergers and deals.

Gardner always wanted to work for the United Nations. He started his international career as a Peace Corps Volunteer in sub-Saharan Africa and returned to the area several years later as an employee of the Chase Manhattan Bank. It was his work with Chase Manhattan, not his time with the Peace Corps, that facilitated his career with the UNDP. He’s since lived in Burma, Thailand, New York and Mongolia, and now he’s moving on to Cambodia.

“You get the proverbial midnight phone call that goes ‘Would you be interested in Cambodia?’” said Gardner.

After thinking it over, he decided he was.

His next posting is familiar territory, as Gardner lived in Bangkok for five years, working as the director of finance and administration for the Mekong Committee, a post that included some work in Cambodia. He met his wife Charinda during that assignment, and he’s happy to be moving closer to her family for a while.

His CV cites nurturing a healthy family as one of his pastimes, and Gardner said he spends all of his free time with his wife and children. They are a healthy, active bunch, and running is just one part of their regular fitness routine (a copy of Runner’s World magazine can always be seen on the desk in his office). But one of the less physical activities he and his family enjoyed most while in Ukraine was attending the ballet. They lived just two blocks away from Kyiv’s Opera House and sometimes attended two performances a week. They were able to sit in the front row - with no tall heads in front - and take in both the dancers on stage and the frenetic movements of the orchestra below.

This will be the eighth time that Gardner has uprooted himself and moved on to a new assignment, and although he says he’s now reaching closure about the shift out of Ukraine, departure is always bittersweet.

“I’m envious of my successor,” Gardner said. “They’re going to have a great place to live and a great program to work on.”