Healing the Children started with one child...

In 1974, a young Korean child died soon after being adopted by an American couple. Her condition could have been treated when she was an infant, but the necessary medical services were not available to her in her homeland. From this tragedy a vision and a cause were born.

Some years after the little girl's death, her adoptive mother happened to hear of another child, this one in Guatemala, who would soon die without a surgical procedure not offered there. She did what seemed natural — and, indeed, inevitable — and arranged for the child to travel to the United States and have the surgery here.

That was the first healing act of Healing the Children.

Today it is an active and imaginative nonprofit humanitarian organization dedicated to securing donated medical and surgical care for children who are in need. From its beginning with one family in Spokane, Washington, it has grown to encompass 13 chapters in 23 states. Since its inception, Healing the Children has provided first class medical care to more than 191,572 children in 100 plus countries, including the United States.

In 1979, Healing the Children began to take shape. By 1981, requests for help were coming in from all over the world and more formal organization was necessary. Thus Cris and Gary Embleton, Naomi Bronstein, and Maureen O’Keefe founded Healing the Children as a nonprofit corporation.