Jim Luce arrived in Indonesia out of the blue, for a friend’s funeral.  It was 1995, and he had landed on the island of Sulawesi, known for its coral reefs and coffee (Starbucks sells Sulawesi blend).  But he skipped the beaches and headed for the orphanage.

Driving through rain forest and banana plantations, he found the children “in the shadow of an active volcano.”

“They had no toys,“ Luce said, recalling that first trip to the Pacific Islands.  “Their clothes were full of holes.  [The place] was clean but unbelievably poor.”

He recently had rescued a one-eyed poodle, three other dogs and two cats from the streets of New York.  “And I thought, if I can help animals, why not children?”

He “didn’t know a thing” about Indonesia, a nation of 17,000 islands.  A native of Ohio – his mother was a child psychologist, his father a French professor – he had studied in Tokyo and landed a job at a Japanese bank in Manhattan.

Once back from Sulawesi, he began typing in a church office, hammering out a program to rescue orphaned children in Third-World countries.  At times he would type all night, bumping into the pastor at 7:00 a.m.  Three years later, he wrapped up a 350-page report.

“People thought I was nuts,” Luce said.  Still, they signed on to help.  Armed with his Initial Report, he recruited a team of fifty contributors, trustees and coordinators.

A group in Indonesia rallied for the project as well:  Luce had married Sulawesian Rini Tendean.  Her family offered a nine-bedroom farmhouse and surrounding coffee-and-clove plantation.  Her brother Jeffry – who holds a master’s degree in pediatric social work – enlisted as director of the Sulawesi project; her cousin Sony signed on as architect.

Luce now lives in a book-lined apartment on Roosevelt Island with his wife and their son, Mathew.  He treks to Rockefeller Center for his “real job” as assistant to the president of an investment bank.  He also earns one dollar a year as founder and executive director of Orphans International America (OI).

Last August, the program sheltered its first four children.  Four more arrived in October.  They live with hired “houseparents” in the Tendean farmhouse, amid coffee and clove trees.  Each has a sponsor sending $50 a month.

At a recent fundraising dinner in his Eastwood apartment, Luce described the environment OI is trying to create:  “We’re not warehousing kids.  We’re trying to replicate a family structure.”  Flipping sheets of paper as rain pounded the windows, he flashed a blueprint of the 40-acre campuses OI plans to build in Indonesia, Haiti, and Guyana:  sixty houses – each with four children and a houseparent – schools, medical clinics, libraries, playgrounds, gardens, Victorian guest cottages, a swimming pool.

A campus plaza offers Buddhist, Christian, Hindu and Islamic houses of worship, as OI plans to bring in orphans of all faiths.  (Indonesia is 80% Muslim, 20% Christian, Hindu or Buddhist.)

“We want to raise the kids as global leaders in their country,“ Luce added.  “If they come here and work at Citibank, that doesn’t help their country.”  Instead, Luce’s program sends child sponsors overseas.  Sponsors may bunk on the top floor of their child’s house or a guest house for a week each year.  (The food is included; the plane ticket is not.)  For the rest of the year, child and sponsor will exchange e-mail messages.  Report cards and school photos will arrive in the mail.  Once the children reach their 17th birthdays, they may jet to their sponsor’s hometown for a summer vacation.  Sponsors may even apply for retirement apartments on campus.

As guests dined on beef rendang, perkedal potatoes, and spicy fish, Luce waved a picture of a bewildered girl with knobby knees.  “Amy“ was born on Christmas Eve six years ago.  (The program nick-names the children to protect their privacy.)  “Her father killed himself; her mother couldn’t handle it and fled the family,“ Luce said.  “She was so hesitant, like a dog that had been beaten.“  This is as far as Luce will go with horror stories, though.  “It’s our policy not to push the harsh pictures.  No Sally Struthers walking through dumping grounds,” he said, recalling the old sponsor-a-child television spots.  (For those who want to know, the OI Web site delves into the nightmares: stories of parents hawking their children as prostitutes for a few dollars a day.)

Amy and her brother, eight-year-old Stanley, had never met an American before Luce and his crew landed in their village of Remboken, population 1,000.  In the whirl of a ribbon-cutting party at the Tendean farmhouse, Stanley met Luce, his sponsor.  The two sat on the steps, chatting about the crowd and the food.  “He had no idea, really, who I was or why I was there,” Luce said.

Another group of kids, however, was thrilled to see Luce again.  When funds collapsed at a Remboken orphanage last year, OI took over.  But the 22 kids “all had family [in town]; their parents just couldn’t feed them,“ Luce said.  “They could go home if they had a little money in their pockets.  So we pulled out some wads of cash, their parents were ecstatic, and they took the kids home.”  Most of the children – ages seven to seventeen – had lingered at the orphanage since they were in diapers.  These Project Family Reunion kids will each gain a sponsor sending $25 per month.

Luce’s 22 dinner guests included a half-dozen Roosevelt Islanders – friends from the Residents’ Association (RIRA) and Toastmasters, the Island’s public-speaking club.

Islander Ethel Romm, an entrepreneur and designer, “came for the food“ and signed up to sponsor a girl in Guyana.  “My rent went down 30 percent when I moved from Island House to Rivercross,“ she said.  “What better way to spend the money than on a child?”

Margie Smith talked of rallying Islanders “as a community” to pitch in for the program.

Islander Doris Chernik, who holds a PhD in Experimental Psychology, heads the Haiti project, set to open by Christmas.  Chernik and her daughter Nina first journeyed to Haiti three years ago for a Christmas vacation.

“I have traveled to 94 countries and had never experienced so much variety in art – masks, wall hangings, sculptures in wire, paper mach‚, clay, metal, semi-precious stones, rubber – any material they can find,“ she said.  “We were so delighted.”  When Luce, a friend from Toastmasters, mentioned plans to pioneer OI Haiti, the Cherniks signed on.

“Then Jim sent me a list of 200 non-government organizations working in Haiti,“ Chernik said.  I told him he was crazy if he expected me to do anything about the list!  But I finally wrote to more than a hundred.”

Back in Haiti, she and the OI platoon met with some of those organizations.  She explored orphanages ranging from clean-and-cheerful to bleak.  The worst, run by two nuns, had crowded forty-three kids into a four-room house.  “When a baby is dropped on their doorstep, the nuns keep it for three months and then give it to the older children – fourteen and fifteen-year-olds – to care for.  The children cook the meals.  We saw them cutting up chicken on the dirt floor of the small kitchen.”

Another Toastmaster friend, Malcolm Cohen, recruited a colleague for the Guyana venture.

Patrick Stephens, who grew up in Guyana – “climbing mango trees, playing cricket, and swimming in the irrigation canals” – coordinates OI Guyana, to be launched this summer.

“I was eager to meet this American who had never even visited Guyana but was committing his time, his money, and his family’s resources toward saving the lives of the children of my country,” he said.

There, orphans live in “barrack-like” facilities, Stephens said, often struggling for clothes, medical attention, and even food.

As guests pulled on their raincoats after Luce’s dinner party, he handed out Indonesian soccer balls made from reeds.  His next fundraising dinner has drawn a crowd too large for his apartment.  The Indonesian Consulate will throw a gala to launch OI Bali.  The Hindu island, known for resorts and surfing, recently was shaken by terrorist bombing.  But Luce’s Orphans International is forging ahead, “trying to create something.”

(Photos accompanying this article were taken by Jennifer Howd)