Cindy McCain
This diary is from John McCain's daughter Meghan's blog, McCain Blogette. It describes, with many great photos, the humanitarian trip she and her mother, Cindy McCain, took last month to Southeast Asia:
We started off the day in Singapore and flew to Ho Chi Minh City where we spent some quality time in the airport before flying to Nha Trang.
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Tomorrow we will accompany my mom on a visit to an Operation Smile post in the region. Operation Smile is a global children’s medical charity that repairs childhood facial deformities. I am so excited to be sharing a different aspect of my family, especially my mom’s work with this important humanitarian organization that changes so many lives around the world.
Operation Smile 6-19-08 (Scroll down):
We started our day in Nha Trang and visited the nearby Operation Smile clinic, where the dedicated doctors and nurses from the U.S. and many other countries arrange for local children with facial deformities to receive free plastic surgery. After touring the facilities and meeting the remarkable staff, my mom and I were able to reconnect with Phuoc Thi Le, a little girl for whom my mom helped facilitate cleft palate surgery in 1997. I still remember her as a baby when she came to Phoenix for her surgery. She is a very sweet, poised 11 year-old girl who looks absolutely beautiful!
The World Food Programme in Bangkok 6-21-08:
Yesterday we flew from Little Saigon to Bangkok and toured a major distribution center for the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations food aid agency that has been helping people in need since 1963...
Touring Bangkok 6-22-08 (Scroll down):
Between our visits with various charities with Mom, we had some free time and went on a boat tour of Bangkok...
Cambodia 6-25-08:
I have been profoundly affected by our experiences over the last few days and can't help but feel that this has changed the way in which I view the world. We visited an inspiring Cambodian school that offers vocational training in cosmetology and other hospitality services for young adults who live in desolate conditions next to a landfill. The training not only provides the students with the education they need to help improve their dire living conditions, it gives them hope and confidence to pursue their dreams. To ensure that each student experiences success after completion of the program, the teachers follow-up with each student. As a result, 100 percent of the school's graduates are employed! It was very humbling to meet so many people who are making a difference in such a challenging part of the world.
Cambodia 6-27-08:
Continuing our travels in Cambodia, we paid a heart-breaking visit to an enormous garbage landfill where indigent families seek shelter and scavenge for food. It was very disturbing to see the living conditions these impoverished families endure, and was an indelible reminder of the importance of the work of global charities like the Cambodian Children's Fund and Pour un Sourire d'Enfant ("For a Smile of a Child"). This wonderful organization provides nutrition and housing, medical treatment, and educational opportunities to these children and families in critical need. The photo speak for themselves, so we've omitted any captions this time.
Cambodia 6-29-08 (Scroll down):
We're concluding our Cambodian trip coverage with some very emotional and uplifting images from our visit to an orphanage that provides shelter for abandoned children who are afflicted with HIV. Much of this work is coordinated by the Wat Opot Project of Partners in Compassion. Wayne Matthysse, the director, was wounded in action as a medic in Viet Nam, and is a heroic, compassionate man who has dedicated his life to these children whose parents have died of AIDS, and many who are living with this disease. It was overwhelming to see so many innocent children in that situation. However, everywhere we looked, there were glimmers of hope - from the artwork created by the students and the trade classes offered by the staff, to the children's smiling faces showing typical curiosity about our video equipment...
In April 2008, Karl Rove, writing for the Wall Street Journal:
...1991 Cindy McCain was visiting Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh when a dying infant was thrust into her hands. The orphanage could not provide the medical care needed to save her life, so Mrs. McCain brought the child home to America with her. She was met at the airport by her husband, who asked what all this was about.
Mrs. McCain replied that the child desperately needed surgery and years of rehabilitation. "I hope she can stay with us," she told her husband. Mr. McCain agreed. Today that child is their teenage daughter Bridget.
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...there was a second infant Mrs. McCain brought back. She ended up being adopted by a young McCain aide and his wife.
"We were called at midnight by Cindy," Wes Gullett remembers, and "five days later we met our new daughter Nicki at the L.A. airport wearing the only clothing Cindy could find on the trip back, a 7-Up T-shirt she bought in the Bangkok airport." Today, Nicki is a high school sophomore. Mr. Gullett told me, "I never saw a hospital bill" for her care.
Here is a photograph of Bridget and Meghan with their father in New Hampshire, via Gateway Pundit, who notes:
Now the world will watch and remember what we do here – what we do with this moment. Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?
Barack Obama
Campaign Speech in Berlin, Germany
July 24, 2008Barack Obama talks.
Barack Obama talks about lifting the child from Bangladesh from poverty.
John McCain already did it.
Here is a little more about Cindy McCain from the John McCain website:
As an advocate for children's health care needs, Cindy founded and ran the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT) from 1988 to 1995. AVMT provided emergency medical and surgical care to impoverished children throughout the world. Cindy led 55 medical missions to third world and war-torn countries during AVMT's seven years of existence. On one of those missions, Mother Teresa convinced Cindy to take two babies in need of medical attention to the United States. One of those babies is now their adopted daughter, 16-year-old Bridget McCain.
In recent years, three organizations in particular have been the subject of her international focus: HALO, Operation Smile, and CARE.
As a member of the Board of Trustees for the HALO Trust, a non-profit organization dedicated to landmine removal and weapons destruction in war-torn countries, Cindy has traveled to numerous countries to see firsthand the impact HALO has had by removing landmines. She recently returned from her second visit to Cambodia. She has also traveled to Sri Lanka, Mozambique, and Angola.
Cindy also serves on the Board of Directors for Operation Smile, a non-profit organization whose mission is to repair cleft lips, cleft palates and other facial deformities for children around the world. Since 1982, Operation Smile has provided free reconstructive surgery to more than 100,000 children and young adults in 25 countries. Cindy has assisted on volunteer missions to Morocco, India, and Vietnam. She is scheduled to return to Vietnam on another mission during the summer of 2008.
Cindy is currently on a leave of absence from the Board of Directors of CARE, USA, which works to fight global poverty, particularly among women. She traveled to Tanzania in February 2007 with CARE.
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