Big Think

Question: Can you describe a time when someone received needed care?

Chudy Nduaka: Yeah, one of the students, a boy, a teenage boy, his story really touches me. His name is Chikudi Aboena, and Chikudi had not-- he just lost his father a few, probably a couple of years back, and his mom, very poor, could not care for him and left him in the care of his elderly grandparents. And when I met this boy, you know, with all the stories of, you know, just-- didn't have anything and we went to where he stayed with his grandparents, a little hut, and they were living in poverty and didn't have access to health care. With the clinic that we've now provided over there he was able to get some health care. We placed him on one of our scholarship programs and paid for his school tuition, so we began to see his life change. But the thing that touched me about this guy when we went to visit him, you know, we had our cameras and you know, our Blackberries, everything buzzing off, he was not moved, he didn't even thrilled about all the expensive gadgets we had. He was very calm and he told his story as a matter of fact, and I couldn't sit through the interview because I was so moved and I didn't want him to see me crying. So I asked for a break to go and compose myself. But he was telling the story of his life and this was his life, so, you know, he wasn't as moved as I was. And after that, that was when we made the decision to find him a home, a foster home, so not only did we provide education and health care to him, we found him a foster parent and moved him out of the rural community into a city where he is now going to school. So that is very life changing.

Recorded on: 6/25/08