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Deelan Calls Daddy in Iraq: “I’m Coming Home!”
March 11, 2010 by Jeremy · Leave a Comment
Press the “forward” button above to view and read the captioned slideshow about Deelan’s journey through surgery and the phone call to his daddy in Iraq that brought tears to our eyes!
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Follow Deelan on Twitter: @DeelanKameran. Subscribe to Deelan’s updates via RSS HERE. Follow Deelan’s thread of longer stories (with pictures & video) on the PLC blog HERE.
Dua Looking a Little Unsure as She Waits to be Taken to Surgery this Morning
February 26, 2010 by Jeremy · Leave a Comment
There’s not much more to say… this picture pretty much captures the uneasiness of this part of the journey. So much hope, fear, trust, and distrust is inherent to the moments right before surgery.
Thanks for joining Dua and her family as they entrust her into the hands of the Turkish team… from their perspective, this is the only chance she’s got. And thanks for all you’ve done to fund her surgery to get her to this point.
Dua’s name means prayer. So as we all remember Dua right now, we honor her parents and honor GOD by entrusting her life to GOD in prayer. More to come after she emerges from surgery…
Follow Dua Arif on Twitter: @Dua_Arif. Subscribe to Dua’s updates via RSS HERE. Follow Dua’s thread of longer stories (with pictures & video) on the PLC blog HERE.
Total Correction for Muhammed!
February 25, 2010 by Jeremy · Leave a Comment
Doctors accomplished the total correction they were hoping for with Muhammed. But he came to us with extremely high pulmonary pressure (in his lungs) so the coming days in ICU will be incredibly important.
Special thanks to Erica Fischer of EMF Images for partnering with us to save Muhammed’s life. At the suggestion of EMF’s Erica Fischer, Cameron and Ben (left) donated the sitting fee for their engagement pictures to the Preemptive Love Coalition to help fund Muhammed’s surgery. This ongoing partnership with EMF promises to save a lot of lives in Iraq and engage the hearts of many who thought they were just signing up for EMF’s great photography!
We know there are hundreds of you out there doing amazing stuff like this to save lives. Sometimes we just don’t know what you’re up to! Contact us.
Follow Muhammed Adnan on Twitter: @MuhammedAdnan. Subscribe to Muhammed’s updates via RSS HERE. Follow Muhammed’s thread of longer stories (with pictures & video) on the PLC blog HERE.
Family Followthrough in Iraq: A Day of Post-operative Testing on Former Heart Surgery Recipients
February 22, 2010 by Jeremy · 1 Comment
Last week we were honored to have some of the excellent medical staff from the Anadolu Medical Center in Istanbul, Turkey make the trip to our office in Iraq to work with us on a few current and future initiatives. Among our agenda for the week:
The video above represents one of our agenda items for the week! In coming days we hope to post a photo narrative about the amazing alumni banquet and a story from local media about the Turkish delegation and PLC’s peacemaking agenda with them.
Don’t forget to push PLAY above to watch hope and life in motion!
OUR CORE VALUES: Long Term, Local Solutions
February 15, 2010 by Jeremy · Leave a Comment
Dr. Aso Faek in his small clinic in northern Iraq where he sees hundreds of kids each month suffering from congenital heart disease. Photo: Matt Addington
Dr. Aso Faeq is a visionary and one of my personal heros. He is certainly one of the foremost long term, local solutions to runaway congenital heart disease as it faces the children and families of Iraq today. A shoemaker named, Aram, is another; as is a radio station director named Rawand; an information technologies guru at the Ministry of Councils who recently moved back from Dubai; a local television host and newspaper editor back from London; and a local women’s basketball coach.
Foreigners like us can be especially susceptible to thinking of ourselves as heros. We are not heros. We are part-time servants; we’re itinerate and our expiration date may be fast approaching. We will always be foreigners. Our kids have foreign names, and the pajamas we wear inside our house when no one else is looking bely the fact that - whatever we may look like on the street - we come from outside.
Luckily, the kids of Iraq are not left to outsiders to solve their problems. There are a slew of long term, local solutions to these local problems developing throughout Iraq every day. Many of these solutions are taking place tangential to us and we are riding along in their stream. But we do our best to ensure that all of our programs are geared toward empowerment so that Arab, Kurdish, and other minority Iraqis truly begin to own the vision for a better, more giving, more unified and agile response community.
A Kurdish shoemaker supplies us with a powerful symbol of grassroots action. Photo: Matt Addington
Our flagship program is called Buy Shoes. Save Lives. - based on a commerce model of selling fabulously produced local footwear to foreign markets. Through this program we consistently accomplish a number of things:
- * invest foreign and domestic capital into the local economy and provide jobs
- * use profit to fund heart surgeries for Iraqi kids
- * upgrade local production and management skills through emphasis on quality controls, inventory management, and by reducing supply chain inefficiencies
It sounds a little boring until you start looking at it through the eyes of a guy like Aram Majid, who puts food on his family’s table every night and hopes to one day send his daughters abroad for education because of the shoes he makes and the management skills he’s learning. Or look at it through the eyes of Kadeeja Mahdi, whose family paid for their portion of her surgery because of the shoes they’ve sold locally and through our Buy Shoes. Save Lives. program.
Lawen Azad - a local media maven - moonlights to organize a local-language Public Service Announcement about kids in Iraq suffering from congenital heart disease. Photo: Matt Addington.
The “long termness” of this solution does not lie primarily in the fact that these shoes have been produced by hand for the last 3,000 years. In fact, that trade is dying off in spades as the country modernizes. The take away from our commercial efforts in Iraq has more to do with shaping a culture of compassion; of teaching the benefit of doing business to do good for others outside of one’s immediate family network, even a stranger. And because we believe that a “compassion” that seeks to keep the peace but fails to work for the good of the other is no compassion at all, those who participate in our program learn the value of strict quality control measures, standardization, waste reduction, and innovation - and those are take-aways that they can readily apply to any industry, family discussion, or government office.
And because we’ve sought to make this shoe the centerpiece for our grassroots action throughout the world, it seems we’ve made it a little bit easier for many to see more clearly the simplicity of a single act to change the neighborhood or world around them. So we increasingly meet Kurds in London running for a child in Iraq; or a radio station putting on a campaign to save a life; or college students deciding that they’ve had enough waiting on the government for more handouts. Grassroots action in on the rise, and that is one of the most long-term, local solutions of all!
Dr. Aso is currently learning intervention - the ability to patch holes and perform other corrective measures without invasive (dangerous) surgery.
But all the money and good intentions in the world will mean nothing for the thousands of children in Iraq waiting in line for life-saving heart surgery without the local skill to cut into a child in hopes of patching a hole, fixing a valve, decreasing dangerous pressure, or “rearranging the pipes.” Thankfully, due to the similar vision of groups in Italy, Israel, and the Anadolu Medical Center in Istanbul, Turkey, there are men like Dr. Aso Faek who are increasingly ready to intervene on behalf of a child and be the local solution to their problem for years and years to come.
And one of the most exciting things about Dr. Aso is that nearly every time we go into his office he is training someone else, passing on the knowledge, preparing the next generation. When we walk through the halls mothers surround him for a chance to have their baby seen. If Bono himself were to walk the halls beside us he would be invisible. Dr. Aso is the hero here.
People like us just serve in the shadows.
ONE DAY SALE: Valentine’s Day Saves Lives
February 14, 2010 by Jeremy · Leave a Comment
44% Off Tees for a Life-Saving Valentine’s Day! One Day Only!
Valentine’s Day is a day of love and romance. And we think you should buy some chocolates or roses for your best friend, spouse, parents, kids, or even for a stranger. Those things are not trivial or just commercial fluff! Who’s to say that people who feel loved and appreciated don’t live longer, healthier lives than those who feel alone and forgotten? I’d go so far as to say that Valentine’s Day (and every other day lived like it) saves lives!
But just to make sure, we’re giving you a special $11 OFF V-Day discount on our new Peacemaker and Heartmender tees - one day only. This way you can ensure that you show some love and save a live today.
So act now, put a shirt on your loved one and save a child’s life in Iraq. All profit from the sale of these shirts go to fund life-saving heart surgeries and our post-operative Followthrough Program in Iraq.
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VALENTINE’S DAY SALE: Peacemaker TeeEvery time we give a heart surgery to an Iraqi child we broker reconciliation between clashing communities. Imagine yourself in this shirt waging peace on Iraq! All proceeds fund our Family Services Followthrough program. |
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VALENTINE’S DAY SALE: Heartmender TeeThese dear Iraqi kids are often born with holes in their hearts that need patching and valves that need replacing. And it’s outrageously expensive! Buy this tee and stand in the hole between what could be and what should be. |
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GENERAL DONATION
Donate the amount of your choice to our February surgery group by entering it in the field below.
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Soma, Hamma, Danar, & Mohammed Leaving Iraq
January 6, 2010 by Jeremy · Leave a Comment
Fearing they are headed into “enemy territory” as Kurds crossing into Turkey for much-needed heart surgery, Baby Soma, Hamma, Danar, & Mohammed ride the shuttle in Iraq to their airplane.
Follow Their Journeys:
Follow 7-month-old Soma on Twitter: @SomaSalah. Subscribe to Soma’s updates via RSS HERE. Follow Soma’s thread of longer stories (with pictures & video) on the PLC blog HERE.
Follow 1-year-old Hamma on Twitter: @HammaDana. Subscribe to Hamma’s updates via RSS HERE. Follow Hamma’s thread of longer stories (with pictures & video) on the PLC blog HERE.
Follow 9-month-old Mohammed on Twitter: @MohammedUmed. Subscribe to Mohammed’s updates via RSS HERE. Follow Mohammed’s thread of longer stories (with pictures & video) on the PLC blog HERE.
Follow 3-year-old Danar on Twitter: @DanarSami. Subscribe to Danar’s updates via RSS HERE. Follow Danar’s thread of longer stories (with pictures & video) on the PLC blog HERE.
The Preemptive Love Coalition covered by NEED Magazine
February 16, 2009 by Jeremy · Leave a Comment
Thanks to Michael Duffield and NEED Magazine for covering Kadeeja’s stories and lending your voice in support of the effort to help Ahmad and the others from the Great Eight whose surgeries we are funding in Turkey right now.
Click here to read the article online.
Follow us on Twitter
February 3, 2009 by Jeremy · Leave a Comment
The Preemptive Love Coalition has been too busy saving lives to maximize our Twitter account. But we’re ready to dive in fully!
With regular tweets from around the world [Texas, California, Iraq, Istanbul & Ankara (Turkey)] plus travel tweets as we hit up Europe & the UK for more preemptive love for people of Iraq, we hope we can connect with you and learn from you in our collective effort to increase dialogue - and love - between international communities at odds.
Valentine’s Day Focus: The Great Eight (Ahmad’s Condition)
February 2, 2009 by Jeremy · Leave a Comment
His great arteries are switched around and in the wrong places. He has two holes in the wall of his ventricle, a hole in the wall of his atrium. Effectively, his heart is a big balloon without properly functioning walls and chambers like yours.
This alone results in exhaustion, frequent fainting, and the blue discoloration in his lips, hands, and feet from a lack of oxygen.
You remember oxygen? That stuff that we pretty much need to live. Ahmad needs it too, but his body cannot process it correctly due to the holes in his little heart.
You can follow Ahmad’s progress on Twitter (twitter.com/ahmadbakhtiyar) or via RSS.
Giant Need
See Ahmad’s campaign page on our website to make a contribution to his surgery.
Small Voice
His brown-booted feet hung limply from the chair. Most children wouldn’t be able to resist swinging their suspended legs back and forth in the quiet room surrounded by the seven dwarfs’ familiar faces, the Kurdish curls presumably spelling the names of Dopey and Sneezy and the rest, scattered among painted forest animals on all four walls of Dr. Aso’s combined office, waiting room and examination room. When the doctor was ready, the practiced hands of his mother removed his jacket from his tiny body, his boots from little clubbed blue feet which matched his hands, tormented eyes watching her above his oxygen deprived lips the shade of blueberries.
The doctor’s eyes widened and his brow furrowed as he looked at the Echo, turned to us and said, “This is a very serious case.” When we asked if he was inoperable the doctor shook his head and simply said again, “It is a very serious case…. I don’t know.” Whether she understood English or not Ahmad’s mother read all our expressions easily. She tipped her head to the heavens, possibly to pray, and more practically to give her eyes the opportunity to swallow the tears threatening to escape.
After the picture we snapped of him standing in front of a Kurdish Snow White & the Seven Dwarves, he hid his little face in his mother’s leg and wiped tears from his eyes…
Liz searched her purse for the third time looking desperately for something to give this poor child. She hoped a matchbox car or at least some stickers had magically appeared since she’d last checked, but her hands came up empty again. Her mind slowly absorbed the fact that even if a toy might have brought a temporary smile to his sad eyes, it would do nothing for his frail body. Instead she prayed for the Turkish doctor who will soon undergo the difficult task of setting to rights all that is wrong in Ahmad’s little Iraqi frame.
We’d like to ask you to be a part of Ahmad’s transformation. Of course, these are hard times. But if you can, please consider sacrificing that Ahmad might live.
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