Getting my bike was thrilling because it was retail therapy in a sense and I now have a new world to explore. But let's review why I plan to ride it 4,000 miles in the first place: I want to help others.
And who best to look to for inspiration in the quest to help others? Today I would say it's the people heading Partners In Health. PIH was founded in Boston in 1987 by Paul Farmer, Thomas J. White,Todd McCormack, Ophelia Dahl, and Jim Yong Kim, also a medical student at Harvard. The story behind PIH is fascinating, and there are lots of resources to find out more about this amazing organization! The website is a good start: http://www.pih.org/
If you're eager to know more of the story, however, you're in luck! All twenty riders this year are reading Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, The Man Who Would Cure The World by Tracy Kidder. The book chronicles the life of Dr. Paul Farmer. I am just about to start the book and am very excited to learn more.Furthermore, PIH has had some VERY exciting news this week! President Obama nominated Dr. Jim Kim, a co-founder of PIH, to be the next head of the World Bank. Dr. Kim, currently the President of Dartmouth College, is pictured to the right. A Forbes article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomwatson/2012/03/23/obamas-surprising-world-bank-choice-health-care-as-a-human-right/
Other books on my To-Read Shelf (which is always filled, because I procrastinate starting books) include: Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor by Paul Farmer; Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo.
As always, many cheers! (And cross your fingers for some Oregon sunshine tomorrow so I can ride my new bike!)
~Nina
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