XXXL heart is huge blessing for orphans

By Doug Robinson
Deseret Morning News
Published: Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2008 12:09 a.m. MST
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As you read this, Kathy Headlee is flying to Africa to assist the thousands of orphaned children there. Many people are moved by media images of starving and destitute children in the world, but the feeling is more literal for Headlee. She moves when she is moved. She has made this trip about 30 times in the past seven years.

She can cite all the statistics of the orphaned and dying children — it was once reported that 500 people a day were dying of AIDS in Lusaka, Zambia's capital, and that each day 6,000 African children lost a parent to AIDS. But as Headlee notes, "It's easy to talk statistics. When those stats have names, when they're people and faces ... " She thinks of Bridgette, Bwalya, Tabu, Carol, Nchimunya, Mwiza, Nankamba ...

What difference can one person make? Headlee founded an organization called Mothers Without Borders. It's a two-woman operation run out of her house in American Fork, consisting of Headlee and an assistant. Last year alone MWB shipped 38 tons of supplies to Africa.

Several times each year she flies to MWB's African base in Lusaka to oversee distribution of supplies. She stays three weeks at a time, then returns to the U.S. to gather more supplies, and then she's gone again. She spends the entire summer in Africa.

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What different can one person make? Her organization has purchased 80 acres in Zambia, using it to grow food and to teach vocational skills. Working in several African nations, MWB builds schools, wells and clinics, cares for orphans and finds and assists those who are already trying to do the work —— grandmothers caring for others' children, schools, existing orphanages, community organizations.

It's overwhelming. There are orphans everywhere, in the street, in shacks or abandoned chicken coops, on the roads, all of them left behind by dead parents. They remain in the neighborhoods where their parents died, creating a huge strain on meager local resources. The adult population is dying out, and the number of orphans grows in areas already plagued by rampant unemployment, disease, food shortages, poor hygiene and no running water, toilets or electricity. Children are left to care for children, usually younger siblings. They eat out of Dumpsters or beg in the streets or turn to prostitution or fall victim to illness or street violence.

Headlee, 54, couldn't turn away from it. She has always had a Size XXXL heart. Her empathy was aroused when she was a child watching images of starving children on TV. As a young adult, she ventured to Mexico from her San Diego home to work in orphanages or renovate houses, and once moved a family into her home that had been living in a garage. She traveled to South America and India to do similar work, and, after seeing a story on "60 Minutes" about orphans in Romania, she made 13 trips to that country to work. Headlee, with four children of her own, eventually adopted a Romanian child.

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Recent comments

Doug,

Thanks for this article. I'm involved with the...

Connor | Feb. 12, 2008 at 5:34 p.m.

Dr. Cunningham,

With respect, the act of giving is not...

JediToby | Feb. 12, 2008 at 1:33 p.m.

The act of giving to starving people can be detrimental to them unless...

Dr. Alan Blain Cunningham | Feb. 12, 2008 at 9:34 a.m.