Good morning,

Howard has asked me to make sure that you received news of his experiences during his travel to Indonesia. He was in Indonesia, helping to launch distributions of Vitamin A and deworming medicines with our program partners who work directly with the children and mothers that we reach in our Operation 20/20 programs. Notes from Howard's daily experiences, in his own words, are below. Pretty amazing!

Greetings from Medan, Indonesia!

Indonesia was wonderful - we were in the North around a city call Medan. Save the Children, our in-country partner, is well organized there and very integrated into the local communities and government. We did a press conference with the Secretary of the Ministry of Health the day after we arrived and ended up on the front page of the paper and on the local TV and radio the next day.

The system we have in place for Operation 20/20 here is excellent. We are getting to the smallest villages, extreme poverty, and these small community clinics (100 children per clinic and then they are supposed to start a new one, although the one we visited Wednesday sees 238 children - so there may be a lag in getting the new clinics started). Local women run the clinics and were so attentive and receptive to our program.

Some of the malnutrition was extreme - a few babies are very vulnerable and will no be alive in the next 6 months without help. The Vitamin A and deworming will make a critical difference.

For one of the babies, she was so fragile that I found myself running around Medan before we left, to hunt up some children's multiple vitamins - I was concerned that she might not make it by the time I got back to the States and was able to ship some product. I was able to get her a year’s supply, so hopefully this will help her before something as common as diarrhea kills her. Unbelievable but true. We met one mom who had lost 5 children and chronic malnutrition and diarrhea were the main causes.

We have a great base to build from in Indonesia - everyone is really excited and supportive to be working with us. Our videographer has gotten some great footage already. The Muslim women have been the biggest surprise - outspoken, wearing jeans, funny, strong and really alive - not at all the stereotype I had in my mind - it is a welcome adjustment.

Thank you all for all of your support—it is the biggest thing that makes this possible.

I appreciate all of your help every day!

Best,

Howard

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Howard B Schiffer
Founder & President
VITAMIN ANGELS

P.O. Box 42029
Santa Barbara, CA  93140

Ph: 805 564 8400
Fx: 805 564 8499
Web: www.VitaminAngels.org