poor georgie’s almanack:
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I stood in the bare-bones pediatrics unit of a partially refurbished neighborhood hospital in Mexico City. The massive, violent 1985 earthquake had devastated the building, the staff, and the people they serviced.
Mexico City’s mayor had organized a day of appreciation for the Pan American Development Foundation’s (PADF) board of directors to honor our help in making the hospital and the city whole again. We actually did a lot. having a plane load of supplies on the ground just hours after the quake. Its cargo included high-powered saws that cut through concrete and other debris. The saws were crucial to rescuing trapped survivors.
Having tools like high powered saws stored in our warehouse and the ability to get a company to donate a plane to deliver them on a moment’s notice, were the kinds of big-picture stuff we annually did across the Caribbean and Latin America.
For years as a board member it was important, but abstract … until I experienced it.
The salty tears in that little pediatrics unit were matched by a couple of nurses, also in tears. They were showing us how the most rudimentary medical instruments we had provided, along with the mechanisms to boil the water used to sterilize the instruments, were simple, but life saving.
Yet, while the power saws in downtown Mexico City were freeing people on TV, the boiling water in the pediatrics unit was saving even more lives.
It was a monumental lesson that big can be boastful but small is more likely to be beautiful.
You can help put into the right hands something as simple as a sterilized scalpel and metal tray, or sophisticated construction equipment, or a hidden program to help kids messed-up by an earthquake in Latin America or a hurricane in the Caribbean. You will be as worthy as Bill and Linda Gates and Warren Buffett. (Who really are worth-y.)
Send your spare change, what’s in your pushkie, to PADF, at this web site. https://www.padf.org/donate/. Don’t give until it hurts, but do give until it feels good.
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