Wings of Hope Young Ambassadors Fund Humanitarian Aviation Programs

By Carmelo Turdo

The Wings of Hope Young Ambassadors held their annual Vote Event this week to decide which humanitarian service programs to support with the proceeds from their 2021 fundraising campaign. During the meeting, the membership chose these two worthy recipients:

Patrulla Aerea Civil Colombiana Maternal Health Care Program 

Global Humanitarian Network Funds 

This year's event was hosted by Wings of Hope Young Ambassadors Liaison Majd Jmeian and the Young Ambassadors Executive Council. Prior to choosing the funding recipients, the Executive Council provided briefings on the major business areas, including mission effectiveness, budget, membership, chapter development, communications, networking and social media outreach. Funding for humanitarian aviation programs has grown significantly since the organization's founding in 2016, and this year's offering will have a greater impact across the spectrum of needs through the network funding concept.

Young Ambassadors President Brad Rafferty welcomes members

The mission of the Wings of Hope Young Ambassadors is "to engage, empower and inspire young professionals aged 21-45 to create cross-cultural connections to help address global problems while building awareness of Wings of Hope." Members have opportunities to interact with their peers in other nations and cultures, engage with field directors of international service organizations and directly change and save lives through the power of aviation by awarding the funds raised here in the U.S. 

About the Funding Recipients

Young Ambassadors Liaison Majd Jmeian with service location map

Patrulla Aerea Civil Colombiana (PAC) Maternal Health Care Program

Patrulla Aerea Civil Colombiana is a private, non-profit organization that flies medical teams to care for people in otherwise inaccessible areas of Colombia. PAC, otherwise known as the Colombia Civil Air Patrol, is the largest volunteer health group in the country. Funding from the Wings of Hope Young Ambassadors will be applied to maternal health programs in El Charco that provide prenatal screening for high-risk pregnancies, monthly ultrasounds, self-care education support and specialized surgical procedures. Thousands of underserved Colombians will receive much needed medical care this year with funding from the Wings of Hope Young Ambassadors.

Global Humanitarian Network Funds (GHN)

Wings of Hope partners with humanitarian non-profit organizations in other countries that have the need and ability to support an aviation program. This year the Wings of Hope Young Ambassadors are employing a recently developed funding concept, the Global Humanitarian Network Funds, to leverage the effectiveness of available resources. Under this plan, funds are allotted to multiple organizations according to their specific aviation program needs.  

"The Global Humanitarian Network fund is a means to provide consistent, baseline funding to all global partners to ensure equity in the funding process and to mitigate emergent requests for funding of large expenses that may otherwise arise from inconsistent support," Brad Rafferty, Young Ambassadors President, explained. "It goes toward funding the basic resources required for sites to perform and maintain their operations, which could be anything from subsidizing an engine overhaul to paying for fuel costs."  

Young Ambassadors Liaison, Majd Jmeian, added: "The GHN funds will be divided into categories based on our partners' needs in 2022, including fuel, medevac flights and medical supplies; parts such as engines, avionics and radios; aircraft annual inspections; and new aircraft.

"This helps each of the bases to exchange best practices and support each other towards sustainable programming," Jmeian continued. "Wings of Hope provides aviation support to each of these bases - by supplying airplane parts, fuel stipends, sourcing aircraft, providing pilots and strategic planning. Since the Young Ambassadors voted to support the GHN, these funds will be used to ensure that they are able to utilize the incredibly vital resource of aviation to serve people in their communities and ensure access to lifesaving care."

The Young Ambassadors participate in local service projects along with their fundraising and professional development activities. One annual event is meal packing for the Kids Against Hunger shipment to Haiti. Wings of Hope Avionics Technician Steve Tomkin coordinates the local packing and storage of the meals. Due to the recent natural disasters and security concerns in the region, the meals will be shipped by Convoy of Hope to Haitian schools as soon as practical. Another meal packing event is planned for the fall. 

Following the vote, several Young Ambassadors were recognized by Brad Rafferty and Majd Jmeian with 2021 Service Awards:

Axa Guerra, VP of Networking

Loni Rodgers, Chair of New Chapter Development

Brian McCamley, VP Membership

Brad Rafferty, President

Nobel Peace Prize-nominated Wings of Hope has the vision of "Changing and saving lives through the power of aviation." Wings of Hope has a rich history of using aircraft to provide humanitarian aid to communities in remote places where it is most needed. In 1959, various Catholic ministries started providing humanitarian air services in the Turkana region of Kenya. Not unlike Charles Lindbergh's preparations for the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean, Bishop Joseph Houlihan of Eldoret, Kenya approached St. Louis businessmen Bill Edwards, Joe Fabick, Paul Rodgers and George Haddaway about his need for a new aircraft. They then provided the seed money for the first Cessna U206 used by the newly-minted United Missionary Air Training and Transport. As news of this first successful aircraft service spread, more aircraft were needed. Wings of Hope incorporated in 1967, and has since provided humanitarian and development services around the world through an inter-faith approach to serving the needs of all mankind. Today, Wings of Hope continues to emphasize aviation as the means to achieve their mission and partners with local organizations in the countries served. A complete list of areas served can be found on the GlobalPrograms web page.

The Aero Experience Week In Review: Our Midwest Aviation Partners Focus on Long-Term Projects

By Carmelo Turdo

The Aero Experience wraps up another week visiting our Midwest Aviation Community partners to gather media for future stories and videos. In this week in review post, we include our visits to three area airports and look ahead to stories we will soon cover in detail. Here we feature the areas of humanitarian aviation, aviation safety, and aviation maintenance. We even have a last look at migrating natural flyers that were included in our previous post!

Spirit of St. Louis Airport, Chesterfield, MO

This week we visited Wings of Hope to celebrate the launch of their newest fleet aircraft, a twin-engine Piper Navajo, on a Medical Relief and Air Transport Mission from Columbus, NE to St. Louis and back. The Navajo recently underwent a year-long upgrade program that will be discussed in detail in the upcoming full-length story. Here we show the departure on the return flight from Wings of Hope World Headquarters. 

St. Louis Downtown Airport, Cahokia, IL

Our next stop is Big River Aviation, just across the Mississippi River at Illinois' third busiest airport. In their hangar, we found a variety of aircraft undergoing inspections and maintenance procedures for individual and fleet customers from around the region. Big River Aviation operates from their main facility at the airport along with a satellite location at Sullivan, MO Regional Airport. As seen in our previous week in review post, they also perform aircraft maintenance at other airports on a case-by-case basis as well.

Creve Coeur Airport, Maryland Heights, MO 

The Greater St. Louis Flight Instructors Association and the FAA presented a program by St. Louis TRACON controller Pete Seddon in the main terminal hangar. The two-hour interactive session reviewed the area's air traffic system and the practical application of pilot/controller communication in various scenarios. Here we show some views of the participants as well as recognition of the airport's support of the local aviation community with an award accepted by Albert Stix.

Natural Flyers: American White Pelicans in Clarksville, MO

The final edition in our natural flyers series features the migration of American White Pelicans to the Mississippi River at Clarksville, MO. These large, graceful birds have mostly replaced the Bald Eagles this far south along the Midwest waterways, and soon the migrating species will find their way back to their home territories. See the link above and previous stories for the full coverage along with the preview below.

 

Natural Flyers - Fifth Birding Trip Is Return to Clarksville, MO Along the Mississippi River

By Carmelo Turdo

It is winter once again in the Midwest, and that brings with it large numbers of migrating birds along the waterways of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers in the St. Louis area. The Aero Experience continues our coverage of these natural flyers in our winter season birding series with a return trip to Lock and Dam 24 in Clarksville, MO along the Mississippi River. As February draws to a close, there are fewer Bald Eagles on the river, but taking their place were a large number of American White Pelicans enjoying a plentiful bounty of fish!