People change the world sans sarcasm

This weekend I met a woman who was taking time out of her own environmental activism to promote her husband's efforts in the tsunami relief. Global Health Access Program (GHAP) is a nonprofit, grassroots organization that specializes in providing relief in places that bigger organizations can't (because of bureaucratic restrictions, silly rules about crossing borders, etc). The story she had to tell was incredible. GHAP really is grassroots. A board once asked her how much of donations go to relief efforts. Her reply, "One hundred and seventy-five percent." First the team of doctors uses all the money people have donated, then they offer up their own Amexs and Visas to cover the rest. For her husband Dr. Larry Stock (ER doctor and professor at UCLA school of Medicine) this was to have been a $3,500 plane ticket each for him and the other two physicians traveling to Sri Lanka together last week. They didn't flinch-- but as luck, or good karma, would have it, during the final coordination with Malaysia Air for the last-minute tickets and oversized freight containers of supplies that also needed to make the trip, the agent informed the team that an anonymous donor had paid for all 3 doctors' tickets. An NPR reporter met the three men at the Bill Bradley International Terminal of LAX and asked if they really thought that three people could accomplish anything amid a disaster of such scale. Again, they weren't concerned. This weekend an email arrived from the team who had spent the 36 hour flight drafting plans to turn an existing structure into a functioning emergency room. The existing structure was previously an orphanage (or maybe an annex to an orphanage). Six days later and with the help of orphans, there is an emergency room.

It's really refreshing to know that there are people who take action to help BEFORE the final 'analysis of the coordination efforts' is in. The organization's website is www.ghap.org. There's a blog with updates of what they're doing everyday.

In other news of refreshment and helping the world, people should read Mountains beyond Mountains. It's written by Tracy Kidder about Dr. Paul Farmer's (MD and PhD in Anthropology -from Hah-vad, darling-) work in Haiti. He's another person who just learned about a problem and decided to fix it. What's more, it's a really good book.

I think everyone should take this as a personal challenge to help our neighbors. And if you find yourself to be especially astute in nonparametric statistics--look no further, I am the neighbor in question and need relief from my data.