Gift of Life, a Manhasset-based organization providing life-saving surgeries to children across the globe, cut the ribbon Sunday for its new campaign headquarters on Plandome Road to raise money and welcome their 50,000th child to be treated.
The organization will be selling $2 hearts to raise money for treating children in its “buy a heart/save a heart” campaign. Hearts will then be displayed in the store window.
“What will end up happening, or the hope is that young people will come by with their $2 – it’s not a big fund-raiser,” Gift of Life founder Robbie Donno said. “But it’s more about exposing the kids and putting their names on hearts.”
Gift of Life was established in 1975 when the Manhasset Rotary brought 5-year-old Grace Agwaru from Uganda to Roslyn’s St. Francis Hospital for life-saving heart surgery. Since then Gift of Life has saved the lives of thousands of children from more than 80 countries.
Donno said Gift of Life provides help to families who have no other means to provide life-saving measures for their child, oftentimes with the threat of death looming over them. He called Gift of Life a “miracle” to these families who face no other options.
Now they are anticipating a new milestone of treating their 50,000th child later this year. Donno estimated the 50,000th child will arrive for treatment sometime at the end of August or September.
Engrained in Gift of Life’s organization is a group of individuals who have dedicated decades to the cause, including Manhasset Rotary Club President John Kennedy, who sponsored the first child treated as a teenager in the ’70s and is still involved to this day.
Donno said he wants to continue this tradition within the organization, and hopes the campaign headquarters will usher in a new young crowd of participants who stumble upon the storefront.
He used the saying “children are like wet cement” to describe his hopes for their participation.
“Everything that lands on them makes an impression,” Donno said. “So years from now they’ll remember walking up and down the streets of Manhasset with their parents, buying a heart that will provide surgery for some kid without which they’ll die. It goes to kindness, compassion and it’s a teaching experience for parents and their children and for the community.”
Multiple local elected officials attended the ribbon-cutting and presented citations of honor to the organization. This included North Hempstead Councilman Dennis Walsh, who praised the organization.
“I think that this is absolutely amazing,” Walsh said. “What we [elected officials] do here is giving pieces of paper, but they did 50,000 surgeries. Not 5,000—50,000 surgeries to all poverty-level people in underdeveloped countries.”
But Walsh said Gift of Life’s actions impact much more than these 50,000 children.
“Their mother, their father, their cousins, everybody in the village that has a problem is hoping ‘maybe I’ll be next,’” Walsh said. “I just think that this is one of the most amazing causes that is around right now.”
Donno expressed appreciation for the elected officials’ involvement Sunday, referring to many of them as friends. He said it not only felt good to have them supporting the cause but that they also help to publicize Gift of Life’s good doings so that more people can become engaged.