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November
2009
Dear
Friends of Sara’s
Wish Foundation,
We know that Sara’s positive presence is alive in
the work that you help us do here at Sara’s Wish Foundation. This
year in particular, with your support, the Foundation has
made significant strides in promoting travel safety here
in the United States as well as abroad.
We greet you this holiday season with a renewed
sense of commitment to making the world safer for all
of our children across the global community.
The work of Sara’s
Wish Foundation has focused on the on-going
development of a portable seatbelt and the production of a
safety video promoting safe travel.
And as in so many years past, our support of
international humanitarian efforts of young women through
our scholarship program continues thanks
to your generosity.
Yes, thanks to you, Sara’s Wish Foundation is making a real difference in the lives of
people today as well as in the promise for a better and
safer world.
Our work on the portable
seatbelt continues to make good progress.
It has been crash-tested now with very satisfactory
results. Dr.
Chandrashekhar Thorbole, the chief mechanical engineer at
The Engineering Institute in Farmington, Arkansas, is
generously offering his expertise to adjust the design of
our prototype to incorporate the features of convenience,
ease of use, and low weight found important in our market
studies. We
are presently focusing on the domestic bus industry which,
it is believed, will soon be mandated to have seatbelts on
new buses going. We
hope that our portable seatbelt will prove useful in
retrofitting older buses.
Sara’s
Wish Foundation is making a presentation in January to
the American Bus Association’s committee on safety at
its conference in Washington, DC.
We are also professionally producing a short six-minute
safety video to bring awareness to students going
abroad and to their parents that they must seek out safety
information so that they make good safety decisions on
their trips abroad. Entitled
“Know Before You Go,” it features Rochelle Sobel from
our sister organization, the Association for Safe
International Road Travel, and Lila Grisar and Sara’s
brother Charlie, who both recount their emotional losses
from a lack of safety in study abroad trips.
The video will offer some useful travel advice and
will direct students to the best websites to “Know
Before You Go.” This
video will be available to download by all study abroad
program administrators who can put it on their websites
and use it in their meetings with students going abroad.
We expect this video will be available by the first
of the year.
Again this year, special Foundation friends need to
be acknowledged for their efforts.
For the third year in a row,
Andy Shumway, ran the Boston Marathon and raised over
$3700
for the Foundation!
Thanks, Andy! And, thanks to all
who played or contributed to another fabulous June golf
tournament, especially tournament organizers Paul &
Leslie Torpey, Fred & Linda Hess, John & Ann
Sutliff, and Dan & Gail Blanchard. Here is the list of the fifteen 2009 scholarship recipients and a summary of their extraordinary work in the global community. Ø
Julie Brooker traveled to Durban, South
Africa where she worked in public health clinics and AIDS
hospices as part of Child Health International. ($1000) Ø
Megan Carroll worked for the Noor
Foundation’s Institute for Family Health, focusing on
the challenges of the resettlement of Iraqi refugees in
Jordan. ($1500) Ø
Jocelyn Cook spent three months in
Uganda working for the Foundation for Sustainable
Development. ($1000) Ø
Chris Curry worked a hospital
in Haiti, providing clinical care to
women and also implementing a medical records data system
which she designed. ($1000) Ø
Vickie Cavanaugh traveled to El Salvador
where she established an organization that supports
orphaned children both in secondary and collegiate
education. ($1500) Ø
Kelly Dahl worked in South Africa on
Mercy Ships, a floating hospital that helps those who have
no access to health care.
($1500) Ø
Maria Hetman spent the summer in Bosnia
working as an investigative reporter and researcher.
($1000) Ø
Lauren Hughes provided health care in a
remote rural area of Tanzania. ($1000)
Ø
Helen Moreira volunteered with the Unite
for Sight program in India, working in eye screening camps
and assisting in ophthalmologic surgeries. ($1000) Ø
Mary Jo Pham worked in the Public
Affairs Office at the US Embassy in Phom Penh, Cambodia
this past summer. ($1000)
Ø
Rachel Sandler is working on a public
health project/childhood malnutrition initiative in Peru
for the 2009/2010 school year. ($1500) Ø
Sarah Sawyer spent last January in
Cameroon where she examined human-landscape interactions
and their impacts on critical ecosystems. ($1500) Ø
Jeannie Schumpert Dias, an
officer/physician in the US Army, worked in Kenya
providing medical attention and education primarily to
impoverished women. ($1000) Ø
Heidi
Tuason spent the summer working at a non-profit
organization in the Philippines delivering health services
to impoverished women.
($1500) Ø
Casey Weimer returned to Guatemala to
continue to work in a ”safe space project,” a program
she established which provides education to indigenous
women. ($1000)
In closing, I’d like to once again express our
appreciation for your generosity.
These are times that challenge us to give careful
consideration before donating any time or resources to
charitable causes. In
the past, you have helped us make Sara’s story a living
legacy, not just of promise but of action.
We ask that you will join with us once again in
honoring Sara’s memory by supporting the work of Sara’s Wish Foundation. Sincerely, Wendy
Kohler, Treasurer and Scholarship Chair
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