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Kurdistan Save the Children Comes through in the Clutch!
February 11, 2009 by Scott
We’ve been getting ready to send a group of Iraqi kids to life-saving heart surgeries in Turkey next week. After crunching the numbers, we thought that we could stretch and send six kids this month. But we had eight who desperately needed urgent surgeries.
Enter our local partner, Kurdistan Save the Children.
Normally, KSC helps contribute to the funding of a couple of kids each month. But they really stepped up to the plate and quadrupled their commitment for February.
Instead of helping two kids this month, they’re helping eight, contributing $2,500 towards each of their surgeries!
That’s $20,000 (or doo defter, as we like to say here in Sulaymaniyah)!
That means that instead of sending just six kids, we can now send eight over the next week, probably saving two extra lives in the process.
It also means that we’re seeing our vision of local solutions to local problems become a reality.
We know that the only hope for sustainable development is when people are empowered and encouraged to tackle the challenges they face together. That’s why we ask for a child’s extended family to contribute something to the cost of their surgery: we don’t want our generosity to rob them of their dignity or their responsibility. Instead, we want to strengthen families as a constructive element of civil society here in Iraq.
And it’s why we’re increasingly looking to form partnerships with Iraqi NGOs and businesses to support their efforts to care for the lives of their own people.
This month, we’re seeing it happen. Local contributions will cover almost half the cost of these eight surgeries. We’ve still got a long way to go, but it’s great to see how far we’ve come.
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Scott Bertrand is the Turkey Director for the Preemptive Love Coalition and gives strategic and logistical oversight to all of our operations in Istanbul, Turkey. When not fully-employed in PLC operations, Scott can usually be found buried in a book or enjoying a good card game with friends. Scott is married to PLC's Hospitality Coordinator, Abby Bertrand. |
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