Never underestimate how the smallest thing can progressively lead step by step by step to great and amazing things. That happened recently with me in my coverage of the faith scene. Its a lesson to all of us that each of us can be a powerful catalyst for good. And we never realize it at the outset.Heres the story: Back in early December, a press release came to my desk from someone I had never heard of, Mike McCartney of Scottsdale, founder of SinglesofFaith.org. His group provided an online way for Christians to meet and a way to volunteer in the community. For Dec. 16, he was organizing the SinglesofFaith.org Phoenix Work Day. After interviewing him, I told him I needed to illustrate the article and would like to get a photo of him at a charity where some singles would be volunteering on the work day. He lined up Project CURE in Tempe where I could come with a photographer and talk to staff and McCartney and then do the story. That day, I met the Project CURE (Commission on Urgent Relief and Equipment) executive director, Jason Corley, a real go-getter. His organization contacts dozens of Valley hospitals and medical facilities and takes used equipment and surplus medical supplies off their hands, then packages them and ship them to some 100 Third World countries. I discovered an amazing Christian-based organization that uses volunteers to sort and prepare the donated materials for shipment. The article, Single and Christian: Local organization matches unmarried believers with service projects ran in the Tribune on Dec. 16, the day of the volunteer blitz with a number of non-profits. I had been so impressed by Jason Corleys pluck and humanity that I suggested his name to the weekly speaker program co-chairman, Joe Schmoker, of the Kiwanis Club of Tempe, where I have been a member for nearly 21 years and past president. Corley would make a compelling speaker some Thursday noon, I told Joe.Corley spoke to the club on Jan. 25 with a PowerPoint presentation, with slides showing the woeful medical settings in some of the numerous countries he has visited. Plus how much change surplus U.S. equipment can bring to those places. At that meeting was longtime Kiwanian, Richard Neuheisel, a Tempe attorney, who co-founded Tempe Sister Cities in 1970 and who was president of Sister Cities International for 15 years and a board member from 1972 to 2002.. Neuheisel was immediately captivated by Corleys presentation and told how desperately needy was one of Tempes seven Sister Cities Timbuktu, a remote city of 27,000 people plus 15,000 nomads in the western Sahara Desert in the nation of Mali. After the meeting, Neuheisel and Corley talked briefly, exchanged business cards and then later worked out a plan to get the ball rolling for Timbuktu. In short order, two 50-pound medical packets of medical supplies, totaling about $10,000, were put together. On March 2, Neuheisel led 13 from Tempe Sister Cities, including seven women, to Timbuktu to mark the 15th anniversary of their pairing as sister cities. It involved a six-hour flight from Paris, followed by a three-hour connecting flight on an old DC-3 (We went up into the plane by ladder, Neuheisel said.) to Timbuktu. They delivered the supplies for the hospital there. They stayed five days and discussed digging the city another water well for $12,000 (making eight with Tempe help). And construction of another school for about $10,000.Neuheisel said the next project will be to come up with $2,500 so Project CURE can carry out a required needs assessment of Timbuktu to potentially add it to the list of bona fide places to be helped. Shipping a container with $20,000 is in the works and the goal is to get $400,000 to $500,000 of surplus Arizona medical equipment and supplies into the hospital and medical offices in Timbuktu. Of course, the magic of all of this is that three committed people Mike McCarthy, Jason Corley and Dick Neuheisel believe in what they do and know how to get things done. But what a joy for me to help to make things happen. One thing kept leading to the next. In the beginning, I only needed a photo to run with a newspaper article. In the end, I helped make life better in, of all places, Timbuktu.

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