They are the disenfranchised and forgotten members of our extended human family, caught in a relentless limbo. Their principle breadwinner has been locked up for political reasons and is therefore incapable of caring for them. “We must do something,” said Dad. He wanted to begin sending them medicines. I was working for Pfizer Corporation at the time, and so I approached the company about donating medicines.
My dad, my brothers, and I incorporated a non-profit organization named Health Help Project, and we began to send medicines to Cuba. We wanted our organization to be run and operated with 100% volunteer workers and no paid staff. All of us had been so disgusted by some of the organizations whose staff members made extravagant salaries, eating up much of the donated proceeds that ought to have been given to the needy. We wanted every penny that was donated to our organization to be sent to the poor.
Soon, we were getting donations of all kinds of medical equipment and supplies from hospitals all over the place. Most of these were things that we could not send to Cuba, because the government officials would confiscate them for their own use. So we began to establish contacts with other non-profit organizations inside poverty-stricken countries, in order to bypass their local politicians, who, for the most part, historically, would rob most of the stuff and sell it in the black market.We had no fancy advertising campaigns and no Madison Avenue promoters. Word spread from one volunteer to another, and before we knew it we were sending millions of dollars of medical supplies and equipment to clinics every year and outfitting hospitals and clinics in the rural areas of these poverty stricken nations. Soon we were sending equipment to 17 different countries and even bringing in children to have operations performed here in America. It is truly amazing to see how God has engineered all of this on a shoestring budget, and the labor of love of many wonderful volunteers.
Our family is grateful to God for the many blessings He has given us, and we simply wanted to give back to those who were less fortunate, a little of what He has freely given to us. This is my second epiphany. I have come to understand that these disenfranchised members of our human family are the people facing obstacles, which they cannot veer from. They have received a torpedo to the broadside, and there are no lifeboats left for them. They are swimming in the deep dark waters of life without hope that anything will ever be different.
We can provide for them vital help to safely navigate the lethal waters to safe harbor with only a little sacrifice, effort, and time to help them persevere; to help them become self-reliant. Sadly, most of us living in comfort do not want to be bothered by the suffering of others. We are reticent to engage ourselves in anything that would require any sacrifice of us. It has been my experience that those who have never really experienced suffering rarely care about those who do. But if we care enough to take the scale from our eyes and learn to be a little selfless, we can change the future for others, one life at a time.
What works for our immediate family also works for our extended family. Modern science has empirically evidenced the fact that a single matriarch engendered all of humanity. Whether the reader believes that an Almighty Creator created mankind, or that mankind is the product of the evolutionary process, the fact remains we are all descended from a single ancestral mother.
Studies of mitochondrial DNA have conclusively shown that the differences between us are so minute as to be practically negligible. If this is true, then we are truly one family. We are all brothers and sisters who are trapped in this spinning rock and struggling to survive. How, then, can we not help one another? Strangers are after all only family members that we have yet to meet and know.
RenAMI
Renaissance Age Management Institute
29150 Buckingham Street, Suite 6
Livonia, MI 48154
(734) 207-9999
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