Cami, Bryce & Ryan

Cami, Ryan, and son Bryce proudly sport their ONE project t-shirts while attending the U2 concert in Phoenix last week.  This amazing family brought home Solange and Joseph in May and they are working hard to make the world a better place for all children by fighting against extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa.    Below is an excerpt of the article which highlighted their family story.  Also, be sure to check out the ONE Blog for more information about the work being done around the world by this organization.

Cami, Ryan and their 13 year-old son Bryce MacDonald were great volunteers with an amazing story to share. Five months ago, Ryan flew to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The DRC is one of the poorest countries on earth, still ensnared in war that causes untold suffering everyday. But Ryan’s trip was also filled with great joy, because he went to Kinshasa to adopt two children, Solange and Joseph, an 8 year-old and 6 year-old orphaned brother and sister.

Malnourished then, the pair have made a full recovery and are “doing great” adapting to their new lives, according to Cami. Still, she describes the heartache of hearing Solange, who watched her parents die of preventable diseases, ask “Why are all the doctors here in America?” Her simple question is a poignant reminder of the importance of our ongoing work advocating for greater health care infrastructure and capacity in the developing world.

Cami also shared a much sadder story with me. In the picture, you can see that she’s wearing a button with the picture of a baby girl on it. That girl is Cassie, also an orphan in the DRC, and she was in the process of being adopted by friends of the MacDonald’s, when she died of malaria at an orphanage in Kinshasa.  Fortunately, they’re on their way to adopting another baby girl, Chloe,

For the MacDonald’s, working with ONE is a way of teaching Bryce, that as wonderful as his new brother and sister are doing here, there is much more work to be done if we’re going to beat global poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa.

Tags: adoption, disease, family, poverty, volunteer

This entry was posted by Brian Wood on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 5:26 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.