Making a Difference: Mary Dowling

Mary Dowling believes in the ripple effect — the impact one person’s relatively small act can have on the larger world. She believes because she has seen it firsthand.
It was 1990 when Dowling, a young mom and registered nurse living in Mount Horeb, was asked to care for a 1-year-old baby coming to Wisconsin from Panama for heart surgery. At the time Dowling was an experienced foster care parent — taking 60 babies into her home over a 20-year span — but this was an entirely different request. She would serve as mother for this fragile 10-lb. child until he was well enough to return to his family thousands of miles away.
“His heart failure was keeping him from growing. Nobody in Panama could do heart surgery at the time,” says Dowling, a 59-year-old mother of five and grandmother to three. “He was with us for five months. He stole our hearts.”
When it was time for the boy to return home, Dowling knew she had one thing left to do. Having never traveled outside the country previously, Dowling got on an airplane to meet a fellow mother.
She was greeted at the airport by nearly 50 people rejoicing over a boy’s return and newfound health. Dowling counts it as an amazing turning point in her life.
“They escorted me to his home where we partied for days. There was a bond there between his mom and his family and me. I didn’t speak the language, but it was pretty obvious,” recalls Dowling. “It was not easy for that mother to send him here. To have someone entrust your child to you was pretty amazing.”

A mission is born

Upon Dowling’s return, one thing led to another. She took in other sick children and started talking with an organization in Milwaukee about medical missions — sending professional medical teams to developing countries to address the unmet health needs of children. Since those days, she has been part of 33 medical missions and in 2002 started a non-profit of her own, Sharing Resources Worldwide (SRW).
Since SRW’s inception, Dowling and her co-director nurse, Lisa Fernandez, have overseen surgical treatment for 533 children in 33 countries, distributed 1,000 wheelchairs and saved 1,641 tons of medical supplies and other equipment from Wisconsin landfills.
Recently Dowling and a medical team returned to Honduras a year after completing an orthopedic mission. While there in 2006 the team, who volunteer their time and pay their own travel, spent an entire week correcting ailments such as club feet, birth defects and dislocated hips. To their delight, dozens of young patients who had undergone those procedures and spent months in casts returned to the hospital to greet them, completely healed.
“The results were tangible and life changing. I have a picture of a child and you couldn’t believe [he had] the same feet. I know his life will be a lot different because he can walk and run like the rest of the kids now.”

Lending a helping hand

Dowling sees great unemployment, poverty and need in West Africa, Central and South America where she travels. Children with what American doctors might deem easy-to-correct ailments like strabismus (crossed eyes), cleft lip or club feet can face a lifetime of harassment and seclusion. Although there are doctors, equipment and medicines often are not available or are too expensive. Donations to SRW can help a family who earns $900 a year afford a procedure for their child that may require $400 in supplies.
“If there are 10 people lined up for a job, who do you think they’re going to pick — the one with the crossed eyes or clubbed feet?” says Dowling. “If you can uncross a kid’s eyes so he can go to school without being teased, he will get a better education. That is going to help his family and his school and his community. It has a ripple effect. I don’t think I could do this if I didn’t believe that.”
Since her trip to Panama in 1990, Dowling has kept in touch with the very first ripple in her medical mission career — that fragile baby who underwent heart surgery. She reports he is now 190 lbs., graduating from high school and considering attending technical college.
She has learned that witnessing one changed life is often all the fuel she and her teams need to go back once again.
“I guess I just became aware that we all have a lot to give and the world’s becoming a lot smaller. I think we can help each other out. We are all brothers and sisters.”

For more information about SRW, see www.sharingresourcesworldwide.org .