Jeremy Courtney: Preemptive Love
Jeremy Courtney will take you on a journey that began with the wish of a father to save his child, and led to his mission of eradicating the backlog of Iraqi children waiting for lifesaving heart surgery. Through this journey, he will describe how living a life of pre-emptive love can break down the walls of division in Iraq.
ABOUT Tedx
TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission, ‘ideas worth spreading’. The programme is designed to give communities, organisations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.
ABOUT Jeremy Courtney
“In his role as Executive Director and co-Founder of the Preemptive Love Coalition, Jeremy has helped fund lifesaving heart surgeries for 180 Iraqi children. His passion and love for the people of Iraq led him to move to Sulaimaniyah with his family.
He is currently leading his organisation in an effort to provide training for local pediatric cardiac doctors, nurses, and medical technicians across the country. His goal is to eliminate the backlog of Iraqi children waiting in line for heart surgery.
Through Jeremy’s initial contract work with an NGO in Northern Iraq, they began to see firsthand the heartbreaking results of poverty and stymied economic and technological development. The Courtneys also connected with a co-worker, Cody Fisher who would quickly become a collaborator in this enterprise of culture and compassion.
Dissatisfied with token sympathy, Jeremy began searching for solutions. A solution came in his growing fascination with Kurdish klash: hand-stitched, locally-made shoes traditionally worn by the Kurds. Cody had been working with a group of non-Muslim Doctors who donated their surgical skills to Muslims as a way of working towards harmony and reconciliation.
Buy Shoes Save Lives
The initial business, Buy Shoes. Save Lives. (BSSL) connected these two discoveries, opening up an international market to buy fashionable shoes in a way that saves lives by funding travel and exam costs for Pediatric heart surgeries. Soon the Preemptive Love Coalition’s vision for ‘local-solutions to local problems’ began to shift away from focusing on economic development and toward medical systems development inside Iraq instead.
After the success of the first-of-its-kind Remedy Mission I in August 2010 the organisation experienced tremendous success and receptivity across Iraq, with contracts to run sixteen surgical/training missions per year this year and invitations from other hospitals for an additional twelve.
Jeremy is also passionate about discovering ways that people can build meaningful bridges of understanding and reconciliation across cultures through music and storytelling.”
The VIDEO
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