The Story of Deeya Kawa and Remedy Mission
During the last weekend I finished a multimedia work about the Remedy Mission that I worked for in last August. These Remedy Missions are lifesaving campaigns done by Preemptive Love Coalition in Iraq. Their goal is to bring pediatric heart surgery teams, to perform surgeries on Iraqi children and at the same time to train Iraqi doctors and nurses.
This is what PLC wrote about this story:
“Deeya’s mom used to stay at home for fear that her daughter’s heart could give out at any moment. Her daughter was born with a life-threatening heart defect… and her daughter was born in Iraq. The combination virtually guaranteed that her daughter would never get the lifesaving heart surgery she needed inside the country; after all, the waiting list for kids needing lifesaving heart surgeries is estimated at 30,000.In August 2010 the Preemptive Love Coalition (PLC) worked with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and local non-governmental organizations to bring a surgical team to northern Iraq to begin a robust multi-year training mission for the doctors and nurses of Iraq. In the course of training, we served 25 families and raised the hopes and expectations of medical professionals nationwide; more families than were sent outside the country by PLC in any 12 month period to date.
In the process, Deeya received her lifesaving heart surgery. She now has a healthy, happy heart thanks to the support of everyone who donated to bring the surgical team to Iraq and thanks to the cooperation of the KRG. And, in her mother’s words, the “are not afraid anymore!”
by Herber Vega
For more info visit: http://www.hebervega.com/
Q and A with the Digital Storytellers at Preemptive Love Coalition
One day last spring, my photojournalism classmate, Lydia Bullock, whispered into my ear, “Tucker, I'm going to Iraq.” I sat up straight. “For six months,” she added. Lydia, at barely five feet tall with short blonde hair, might seem like the least-likely candidate to move to a war zone for half a year. But her passion to do good was insationable
. She had a mission to help the Iraqi people through “visual peacemaking,” and so, too, did her comrades in arm, the Preemptive Love Coalition. Living and working in Iraq, PLC trains local heart surgeons and nurses to help the tens of thousands of children in need of surgery. By documenting each child's operation, they do what far too many nonprofits fail to do: let donors see first-hand the lives they are saving, literally. Find out how they do it in my Q&A with PLC co-founder Cody Fisher.
