The Hope of a Mir­a­cle Foun­da­tion (HOAM) tru­ly seeks to live up to its name. Each year, the foun­da­tion acts as a life­line, sav­ing or en­hanc­ing the lives of more than ten chil­dren with ill­ness­es in this coun­try.

Start­ed in 2006, it aims to fi­nan­cial­ly as­sist sick chil­dren of Trinidad and To­ba­go—up to age 18—who re­quire med­ical treat­ment and/or surgery lo­cal­ly or abroad when such treat­ment or surgery is not avail­able in T&T. The foun­da­tion seeks to “re­turn health and qual­i­ty of life to the chil­dren and peace of mind to their fam­i­lies,” pres­i­dent, Cindy Schut­ters-Achim told Sun­day Guardian re­cent­ly.

Part­ner­ing with the In­ter­na­tion­al Kids Fund—a pro­gramme of the Jack­son Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion in Mi­a­mi to help crit­i­cal­ly ill chil­dren most­ly in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, HOAM tries to as­sist 15 chil­dren per year. The med­ical fees of cas­es that go abroad are usu­al­ly over US$40,000, Schut­ters-Achim said, adding that the Holtz Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi/Jack­son Memo­r­i­al Med­ical Cen­tre which takes the ma­jor­i­ty of the cas­es was a top-of-the-line hos­pi­tal in the US, eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble from T&T.

She in­formed that many of the par­ents who come to them have chil­dren need­ing as­sis­tance for heart con­di­tions, Hirschsprung dis­ease (a con­di­tion af­fect­ing the pas­sage of stools) and oth­er main is­sues which can­not be fa­cil­i­tat­ed lo­cal­ly. The foun­da­tion’s cur­rent chal­lenge is to ac­quire ur­gent­ly need­ed funds.

“We want to bring back aware­ness that we are still here; ready, will­ing and hope­ful­ly able to as­sist the chil­dren on our wait­ing list. This can on­ly be done once pub­lic and es­pe­cial­ly cor­po­rate sup­port is giv­en,” Schut­ters-Achim said.

In the past, HOAM has held fundrais­ers such as galas and lun­cheons, and has reached out to po­ten­tial spon­sors through meet and greets and cor­po­rate cam­paigns high­light­ing how sup­port could be giv­en.

Do­na­tions to the foun­da­tion have been dras­ti­cal­ly af­fect­ed by the pan­dem­ic which al­so cut off over­seas trav­el for sched­uled surg­eries. Such surg­eries, in any case, end­ed up be­ing de­layed as COVID cas­es were giv­en pri­or­i­ty. Schut­ters-Achim said while par­ents await­ing help un­der­stood and have been pa­tient, they re­main con­cerned.

De­spite the set­backs, the foun­da­tion was able to help fund surg­eries for eight chil­dren from 2020 to 2021.

A mem­ber since its in­cep­tion, Schut­ters-Achim said HOAM evolved from the His­pan­ic Women of Trinidad and To­ba­go, a group of Latin ladies from the ex-pat com­mu­ni­ty which she orig­i­nal­ly joined to help main­tain her Span­ish-speak­ing abil­i­ty when she first came to Trinidad. “As any foun­da­tion or group goes, peo­ple come and ask for do­na­tions and we saw a need in the chil­dren’s health sec­tor. From there Hope of a Mir­a­cle Foun­da­tion came about,” she re­called.

HOAM’s five-mem­ber board, in­clu­sive of Schut­ters-Achim, com­pris­es vice-pres­i­dent, Beat­riz Ra­moutars­ingh; trea­sur­er, Al­ma Rosa Su­per­sad; mar­ket­ing of­fi­cer, Nicole Si­mon-Thomp­son; and sec­re­tary, Su­san Delph, all work­ing women who vol­un­teer. In the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s 15-year ex­is­tence, it has as­sist­ed over 150 chil­dren and all of the cas­es have had pos­i­tive out­comes.

“All of our cas­es have been suc­cess­ful. The chil­dren lead hap­py lives, suc­cess­ful lives they were able to move on thanks to the surg­eries they had,” Schut­ters-Achim said.

Most re­cent­ly–March 12–it has come to the aid of 16-year-old Jaidon Vin­cent who ben­e­fit­ted from a suc­cess­ful surgery to save his eye­sight at the Caribbean Vit­re­ous and Reti­na Surgery Ltd.

Mak­ing a plea for a heart pa­tient (Atri­oven­tric­u­lar Sep­tal de­fect), Ben­jamin Ro­jas, three, who is in ur­gent need of surgery at a cost of over US$60,000, Schut­ters-Achim said there were two chil­dren with epis­pa­dia (a rare birth de­fect lo­cat­ed at the open­ing of the ure­thra) who al­so re­quire help.

In the mean­time, she said she was touched by the ef­forts to do­nate to par­ents whose chil­dren have been as­sist­ed in the past de­spite their eco­nom­ic con­straints.

Since 2019, HOAM no longer op­er­ates out of its of­fice at Star­lite Shop­ping Plaza. They could not af­ford to keep it.

“It’s an ex­pense that we pre­fer to put to­wards as­sist­ing the chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly now since do­na­tions have been se­vere­ly af­fect­ed,” she said.

Sjy Ravello

Photo courtesy Nazra Khan-Ravello

‘These ladies are pas­sion­ate about help­ing chil­dren’

Sjy Elchae Rav­el­lo was proud and hap­py to say his name out loud via cell phone. Burst­ing with en­er­gy and verve, the Sec­ond-Year stu­dent and pas­sion­ate bi­cy­cle rid­er has brought his par­ents, Nazra Khan-Rav­el­lo and Shir­van Rav­el­lo, im­mea­sur­able joy and ful­fil­ment in his six years of life. One would hard­ly guess that the ac­tive in­fant has had to grap­ple with a life-threat­en­ing ill­ness in his short life. Sjy (pro­nounced Ess-Jay) was born in 2016 with pink Tetral­o­gy of Fal­lot, a crit­i­cal con­gen­i­tal heart de­fect which, in sim­ple terms, meant that, from birth, there was more than one is­sue with his heart, his moth­er re­vealed in a tele­phone in­ter­view re­cent­ly.

When Khan-Rav­el­lo and her hus­band went to a pe­di­atric car­di­ol­o­gist with a rare ma­chine suit­ed for very young ba­bies, she did an echocar­dio­gram to de­ter­mine the ex­tent of his heart de­fects. They found out that Sjy’s con­di­tion would re­quire him to un­der­go surgery by age six months and were dev­as­tat­ed.

“She (the pe­di­atric car­di­ol­o­gist) gave us some par­ents’ num­bers be­cause it was very dif­fi­cult for me. It was my first ba­by, my on­ly ba­by and I had him at not too much of a young age. She knew that it was very dif­fi­cult. I start­ed to talk to these par­ents and they men­tioned Hope of a Mir­a­cle and gave us a con­tact num­ber. My hus­band took it up­on him­self to go im­me­di­ate­ly,” Khan-Rav­el­lo re­called.

At the HOAM, her hus­band was as­sured that he would re­ceive help and the Rav­el­lo’s lat­er sub­mit­ted all the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion.

“What Hope of a Mir­a­cle did for us was re­al­ly pro­vide hope and they took a huge lev­el of stress that went along with a sit­u­a­tion that seemed in­sur­mount­able and was very emo­tion­al. They nev­er re­fused us or gave a lot of red tape. They said yes im­me­di­ate­ly; ‘yes, we would like to help your son.’ And that gave us hope, in a sit­u­a­tion where oth­er par­ents would be faced with the re­al­i­ty that your child could die if they didn’t have the surgery at six months,” Khan-Rav­el­lo said.

De­scrib­ing the ladies at HOAM as very friend­ly and un­der­stand­ing, she said they made the process very easy, match­ing Sjy with the Holtz Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi/Jack­son Memo­r­i­al Med­ical Cen­tre, find­ing the funds to cov­er the cost of the US$50,000 surgery and mak­ing the nec­es­sary arrange­ments for her and her hus­band to be ac­com­mo­dat­ed abroad. Khan-Rav­el­lo said she and her hus­band sim­ply had to foot the air­fare.

She was al­so im­pressed that al­though the usu­al lodg­ing for par­ents await­ing surgery for their chil­dren near the hos­pi­tal was ful­ly booked, the foun­da­tion, along with the In­ter­na­tion­al Kids’ Fund, al­so en­sured that they had com­fort­able ac­com­mo­da­tion at a ho­tel for the month-long process.

She al­so had praise for the staff at Holtz.

“The doc­tors at that hos­pi­tal were the most beau­ti­ful peo­ple. It was as if they knew who we were. Emo­tion­al­ly it was a stress­ful time, but they made it easy for us. They re­as­sured us by their pro­fes­sion­al ap­proach.”

She said from be­ing picked up at the air­port to the dai­ly trips to and from the hos­pi­tal, all arrange­ments by HOAM went smooth­ly. Even the fol­low-up done by the foun­da­tion was out­stand­ing, she felt. Khan-Rav­el­lo said she and her hus­band chose to have lo­cal fol­low-up care for her son and the foun­da­tion would al­so as­sist in pass­ing the in­for­ma­tion be­tween hos­pi­tals. She has kept up com­mu­ni­ca­tion over the years with the women at the foun­da­tion.

De­scrib­ing Sjy as a “liv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny” and “a nor­mal boy” who needs no med­ica­tion, Khan-Rav­el­lo said he rides, skate­boards, runs, flips, and does well aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly.

“I don’t be­lieve this just hap­pened. I be­lieve that it was or­ches­trat­ed by God. These peo­ple with the help of God gave my son a chance to live. I re­al­ly give God thanks for that.”

The grate­ful moth­er, who at­tends The In­crease Church in Rio Claro, said the ex­pe­ri­ence built her faith. She urged that par­ents with chil­dren who are ill should trust that God would send help for their spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion and should con­tin­ue to speak life in­to their chil­dren.

Elijah Logie

Photo courtesy Leanda Logie

Eli­jah Lo­gie

Le­an­da Lo­gie, whose four-year-old son, Eli­jah Lo­gie, was as­sist­ed by Hope of a Mir­a­cle in 2019 and 2020 agreed. She saw her strug­gle to re­ceive med­ical surgery for her son as a char­ac­ter-build­ing ex­pe­ri­ence that in­creased her faith. En­cour­ag­ing par­ents to not be afraid, pray, per­se­vere and ex­plore op­tions, she said there were “good peo­ple out there will­ing to help.”

Her son is a ju­bi­lant pre-school­er who loves to play and watch his favourite car­toon, Paw Pa­trol. She said he has re­cov­ered ful­ly from surgery to cor­rect a de­fect in his ure­thra.

The surgery was a two-part process in 2019 and 2020 at the Holtz Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal.

Re­call­ing her ex­pe­ri­ence as a 30-year-old first-time moth­er who was told of her son’s con­di­tion short­ly af­ter his birth at a pub­lic hos­pi­tal, Lo­gie said she was ini­tial­ly “scared and con­fused.” She was giv­en ad­vice, did some re­search of her own and was put on a wait­ing list of about 100 for her son to have surgery which was per­formed by on­ly one spe­cial­ist lo­cal­ly.

“When he was six weeks old, I had to at­tend two spe­cial clin­ics. Every time I would go, they would tell me to come back. They told me that in Trinidad about 20 boys are born with the con­di­tion per year, and the wait­ing list was very long.”

Lo­gie said de­spite sup­port from her son’s fa­ther and her fam­i­ly, she be­came dis­cour­aged but start­ed to seek al­ter­na­tives and prayed a lot. Help came when she was in­tro­duced to HOAM af­ter a rel­a­tive who lives in Mi­a­mi start­ed mak­ing in­quiries at chil­dren’s char­i­ty hos­pi­tals and was ad­vised by Jack­son Memo­r­i­al of its con­nec­tion to the char­i­ty foun­da­tion in Trinidad.

Lo­gie said when she con­tact­ed Schut­ters-Achim, she was re­lieved that the foun­da­tion was will­ing to help and was elat­ed that Eli­jah would be next in line. She said the foun­da­tion even guid­ed her on the steps to ob­tain her visa and gave her a let­ter to help en­sure she was grant­ed one. “They were very help­ful and re­source­ful. They are some very nice ladies who are very pas­sion­ate about help­ing chil­dren, so the in­ter­ac­tion with them was very pos­i­tive,” Lo­gie said.

Ac­com­pa­nied by her moth­er, she fi­nal­ly set off in 2019 with her ba­by, who was 18 months, for an ini­tial con­sul­ta­tion at the Holtz Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal. The two surg­eries fol­lowed. Eli­jah’s heal­ing process was rapid, she said. He start­ed to play one week af­ter the first surgery and is a live­ly talk­er.

“He’s hav­ing a nor­mal life, thanks to the foun­da­tion. You would nev­er know he went through all of that at a young age,” Lo­gie, who al­so keeps in con­tact with HOAM, said.