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How We Started

It all started with a little boy named Amiru.

 

In 2003, I went to Africa for the first time. When I was there I met Amiru, a four year old who desperately needed a mitral valve replacement for his heart. It's a serious but fairly common procedure in Western countries - but unavailable in his home country of Nigeria. In fact, there's virtually no pediatric cardiac surgery available there at all. I came home determined to do whatever I could to help him. I called people, looked up organizations on the internet, so terrified that this task was beyond me. In the way that life can go sometimes, he died before I found a way to help him.

 

Dr. Bode Thomas, Amiru's amazingly dedicated doctor, broke the news to me when I called to update her on my lack of progress. I was devastated - and ready to crawl under my covers crying. But she wouldn't let me. She said "There's a girl named Ruth..." Ruth had the same condition as Amiru - and she also desperately needed surgery. Something about Amiru's death sobered and galvanized me. I decided Ruth WOULD get help. I didn't know where to start - how to REALLY make this happen - but I just took a "deep breath and did the next right thing I could think of."

 

Eventually I came in contact with an organization called Knightsbridge International which has a program called Children's Medical Missions, run by some of the most dedicated crusaders for a better world that I've ever known. I submitted her case to them – and they arranged for free surgery for Ruth in Portland, Maine. I was thrilled on the day that they told me she was approved, crying my eyes out, almost unable to take it in. After that, it was just a matter of logistics.

 

Everyone I know pitched in for her airfare - I spent countless hours working to get her an “impossible to get” visa - and before I knew it, I was at JFK, watching a frightened but brave 11 year old girl disembark, a kid who had never even SEEN a plane before the day she got on one. Three days after landing, on her 12th birthday, she underwent the five hour surgery that would save her life. Ruth is now back home in Nigeria, a happy healthy beautiful young girl.

 

For me, Ruth became the first of many. Once I saw that it was possible to affect a life so profoundly just by making phone calls, sending emails, raising money, and just plain "doing it" - once I saw the possibilities - well, who wouldn't want to keep going?

 

I believe that we all want to do good in this world. No matter who we are or how hard our own lives are (in fact, sometimes for that very reason), I think we all have an innate need to give to others, to share ourselves and our resources with those who have less than us.

 

I'm blessed to know people who want to help – and blessed as well to know people who need the help. I know that may seem oddly phrased but I do believe that both are an opportunity to open myself to the greater good in myself and in this world. I am consistently blown away by our beautiful needs - our need for each other, our need for connection, our need to devote ourselves to something larger.

 

Recently I was working in a refugee camp in Africa, where I met so many lovely, funny, kind, brave people - along with the usual assortment of cranky, exquisite humanity that you find no matter where you are. One kid in particular stood out - his name was Sam and he was making his living in the camp by teaching drama classes to war and HIV widows. He had been a budding young playwright back home before the war in Liberia.

 

One day, just before I left, he asked where I was off to next. I told him I was going to a neighboring country to work with street kids. He looked thoughtful and wistful and full of fierce hope and sadness all at once. "I think this is what I would like to do - travel around and help people." There he was in a refugee camp - orphaned since he was a kid - and there was still something inside him, something that said "I want to help." This organization is for Sam - and for Ruth - and for anyone who has that stirring feeling inside - that beautiful need that simply says "I want to help."

 

Together, we can do the next right thing.

 

Cori Stern

Founder, The Next Right Thing

Cori's blog