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By the Preemptive Love Coalition:
Without making things overly simplistic, the Preemptive Love Coalition began with, well, love. Love for the Kurdish people. Love for their most hopeful and peaceful aspirations. Love for the hidden beauties of their culture. And love for their kids who are dying from broken hearts.
In July 2007, Jeremy Courtney and Cody Fisher were working for an NGO in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan. Over the course of their work, they often interacted with parents whose children received free heart screenings from the organization. All too often, though, the parents were given bad news: severe pediatric heart disease requiring surgery for adequate treatment.
But for nearly all families, this diagnosis was useless because the dinar or dollars it would take to fund the surgery were two-yearsʼ-wages beyond their reach. The only way the hearts of these children would ever be healed would be if others were able to work together to provide the funds for them. Courtney and Fisher saw the urgent need to mobilize the financial resources to begin dealing with the daily growing backlog of (at that time) 3,000 cases in Kurdistan alone, and they took action.
Courtney and Fisher launched Buy Shoes Save Lives and began selling beautiful, handmade Kurdish Klash as a way to generate critical funding for this need through a creative blending of commerce and compassion.
As this movement gained momentum, more staff were added and more programs started. The Preemptive Love Coalition (PLC) was officially incorporated in February 2008 and immediately began diversifying the means through which people could come together to save the lives of kids in Iraq.
In four years of existence, PLC helped save the lives of over 160 children. By sending the children to Turkey for surgery, PLC hoped to facilitate peacemaking and perspective-change. It wasnʼt uncommon to hear motherʼs warning their children, “Donʼt speak Kurdish around the Turks or theyʼll kill you.”
But their perspectives were radically changed as Turkish doctors and nurses put every effort into saving their childʼs life. Moms and dads were able to watch as their longstanding ʻenemiesʼ pieced their world back together. The families then took those stories back to their homes and shared them, and who could argue? This was irrefutable evidence that stereotypes can be torn down through physical healing.
But that was only the beginning. Exporting children for surgery abroad doesnʼt do much for local Kurdish hospitals, so in August of 2010 PLC hosted a world class surgical training team. In just 2 weeks of hosting the team, PLC provided more surgeries to Kurdish children than in all of 2009 combined and at less than half the price!
These surgical missions put the average cost of a heart surgery down to $670 – thatʼs all it takes to save a childʼs life! On top of that, local Kurdish medical professionals receive hands-on training with a top-notch international surgical team in hopes that someday theyʼll be able to perform these complex operations on their own – Kurds saving Kurds!
Why not join the Coalition and begin saving lives right now? Go to preemptivelove.org to learn more about how your donations and advocacy can transform pediatric cardiac care in Kurdistan.
Itʼs hard to predict what the future will hold for the Preemptive Love Coalition, but it looks extremely hopeful for thousands of Kurdish children with a peace-loving, surgery-sponsoring Coalition of Kurds on their side.
wow! i read this, and i felt as if a storm couldn’t take this sense of fulfillment away from me, knowing there are great people out there, giving there time and energy to help those who are really in need. Everybody needs to get down and help, because if this is how we get down, it won’t be long until we get up.
it is the most powerfuld image of the humanitarian work i ever seen in kurdistan .this the way we can build the healthy future for our kids and give them oppotunity to enjoy live now .these doctors they deserve all praise and gratitute .God bless them all
The Children of Adam are limbs of each other
Having been created of one essence.
When the calamity of time afflicts one limb
The other limbs cannot remain at rest.
If thou hast no sympathy for the troubles of others
Thou art unworthy to be called by the name of a man.
(Sa’adi Shirazi. December 9, 1293)
After all of this effort you have made to save our children’s lives you are worthy to be called by the name of a MAN
This is an absolutely inspiring story which highlights the immense power of people joining together positively for a particular cause, in this case a cause which has saved the lives of so many innocent Kurdish children. The PLC have made ground-breaking changes though their work: widening accessibility to this treatment which has created a fairer system for all; their creation of opportunities for local Kurdish surgeons and on a larger-scale encouraging peacemaking and cooperation with other nations.
This is an aspiring article in which open’s your eye’s to the real world and suffering of people and children we do not know about. Showing the strong hearted emotion parents and children have to deal with and reconzing that you can put aside your differences to help the people in need. Motivation to aknowlegde that an individual can make a difference, but also heartbreaking that such innocent lives have to deal with suffering. It is beautiful to see that people hold positive views and ambition in suceeding to make a postive difference in many lives. For everyone who have made a difference and for the people who are going to make a diiferent shows the beauty from something that would hurt any warm person.
It is such a shame that mankind can sit around and let such atrocities happen every day.
This storey is a true phenomenon of the PLC and their determination to continually bring hope to many. The many people who cannot simply afford the live-saving treatment can now know that it just might be their life that is saved one day.
On behalf of the Preemptive Love Coalition, thanks everyone for your encouraging words. We are honored to live and work among the Kurdish people. Your children have blessed us as much – if not more – than we could hope to bless them!
Children will not remember you for the material things you provided them but the feelings that you cherished them. (Richard L Evans)
Love has saved these precious children.