A One Woman Campaign Against Hunger

I took this picture years ago while visiting Haiti. It shows a typical urban scene: women and girls, wearing probably the only outfit they own, going for drinking water at a public tap, if they're lucky, or from a polluted, garbage strewn stream, if they're less fortunate. The situation in Haiti today isn't any better. In fact,  it's worse. Food prices globally are soaring, and Haiti has been hit hard. Add to that the devastation caused by recent hurricanes, and there are people in Haiti literally starving for lack of something to eat.

Bernadette Francois is one of our nurses at the hospital who emigrated from Haiti. Because of women like Bernadette, American hospitals are staffed by kind, devoted and hard-working women from a variety of cultures who have made their lives here and care for our sick, elderly and poor. And, because of women like Bernadette, the poor in places like Haiti have hope. In good times, Bernadette works tirelessly to send funds back to Haiti, supporting a disabled elderly woman who is of no relation to her, and funding several children through school. Recently, Bernadette is sending food, clothing, anything she can get her hands on, to Haiti. We told her to go into the emergency clothing closet at work and take anything there that's not of immediate need to our homeless patients (yes, we've got LOTS of homeless patients, who usually need a new set of clothing after they leave us).  Friends and associates are handing Bernadette $5, $10, $20 here and there for her to buy staples like bags of beans, rice and pasta. Yet the majority of what she's sending to Haiti are being purchased with Bernadette's personal contributions.

It never ceases to amaze me how many women there are out there like Bernadette; tireless, one woman campaigns against hunger, homelessness and poverty. They work quietly and without any fanfare, believing that even the very little bit that they do is helping someone and is worthwhile. Of course, if all of us did just one thing for one person, or devoted ourselves to just one cause, we would see a tremendous change for good in the world. If women like Bernadette ceased doing even small acts of kindness and compassion, our world would be so much the worse for it.