AMERICARES LOOKS BACK ON 25 YEARS
By Natasha Lee
Greenwich Time, CT –
May 17 2007
STAMFORD — Eighteen years ago, Arman Ghazaryan walked off a plane
in Armenia and into the arms of his grandfather.
It was March 1989, three months after a 6.9 magnitude earthquake
rattled his hometown, Spitak, in northern Armenia.
An airlift from AmeriCares a month earlier had flown the paralyzed
Ghazaryan to a New York hospital to undergo surgery to reconstruct
his leg and spine. He was one of dozens of victims transported to
hospitals in Connecticut and New York.
The Stamford-based disaster relief agency was the first organization
to arrive in the former Soviet Union and provided $13 million in
medicine and medical supplies to thousands of victims.
Ghazaryan, then 8 years old, spent three hours trapped under the rubble
of his collapsed grade school. The weight of the debris crushing his
leg and spine; his brain swelling under the pressure.
"I had no hope," Ghazaryan said through a translator on Friday. "I
didn’t think I was going to stay alive."
Last week, Ghazaryan walked off a plane again. This time as a
26-year-old man, returning to the place that gave him a second chance
at life.
AmeriCares celebrated 25 years of service last week with a gala in
New York whose guests included former President George H.W. Bush and
his wife, Barbara; Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor
Elie Wiesel; and African activist Paul Rusesabagina, the inspiration
for the movie "Hotel Rwanda."
Ghazaryan also was there. He shook hands with the former president
and his wife, and thanked familiar faces for helping him walk again.
The earthquake destroyed Ghazaryan’s hometown, killing 25,000 people,
including his mother.
"I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to come to this country
and what they’ve done for me," he said.
The worldwide relief agency has evolved from a small operation based
out of a New Canaan home to providing more than $6 billion in aid to
137 countries, including Brazil, Darfur, Iraq and China. AmeriCares
also runs three medical clinics in Fairfield County, and several
community programs that provide health care to low-income, elderly
and disabled people.
"Back then it was swashbuckling, no meetings, no memos, just go —
the need is now," said Eric Weintz, former project director, who
joined the agency in 1988.
Weintz spent three years overseeing missions, unloading bandages and
medicines from airplanes, and transporting victims to safety. His
time with AmeriCares inspired him to become a doctor, and today he
practices emergency medicine in Menlo Park, Calif.
"When you get involved in an organization like that, it’s kind of
hard for it to not change your life," he said.
AmeriCares has been among the first-responders to disasters national
and international from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to Hurricane
Katrina, to the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka.
Greenwich native Robert Macauley founded the agency in 1982 on the
ambition of "act now and worry about the red tape later." Macauley
is now chairman of the board of directors.
The mission hasn’t changed and neither have the challenges, president
and CEO Curtis Wellington said.
Relief workers are still confronted by poverty, a lack of advanced
hospitals and doctors, as well as the number of people affected by
poverty and nonexistent health care.
"It’s still a big problem, in spite of the advances, the number of
people who aren’t being reached is still the same as the population
increases," he said.
The agency is working to partner with pharmaceutical companies in
Europe and America to help increase the flow of medicine supplies to
impoverished countries. The goal is to double the volume of people
the agency serves within the next five years in Asia and Africa.
Despite its expansion, the agency still remains a "tiny" organization
for the size of its impact, Wellington said. Staff has increased from
50 to 200 members worldwide over the last two decades, with help from
hundreds of volunteers.
"As Bob (Macauley) would say, we find someone who needs help and help
them and that principle is what drives AmeriCares," Wellington said.
"Our basic values really haven’t changed."