Wings of Hope, an organization headquartered in Chesterfield, Miss., has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The organization flies volunteers around the world to provide health care and teach people living in poverty how to tackle their struggles.
“It is very humbling being nominated and it’s a tremendous tribute to all the volunteers and the donors of Wings of Hope,” Executive Director Doug Clements said. “We have won many awards, but this is our first time being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize award. So, even if we don’t win, it is a tremendous honor to be nominated.”
The organization uses donated aircrafts to fly sick children from the United States and around the world to receive free and proper health care. Volunteers also fly animals, mostly pigs and chickens, into jungles so that villagers can learn to produce their own food and be independent. Teaching these villagers self-sufficiency is a key component of Wings of Hope’s mission. The volunteers who help Wings of Hope come from all over the world to help bring peace and hope to those in need. Even with their vast workforce, they are always looking for more help and welcome new volunteers.
“Wings of Hope is a humanitarian organization, and that means if you are someone that needs health care or medical attention, we provide that for you,” Vice President Michele Rutledge said. “But if you are someone who is hungry, we’ll teach you how to grow your own food, and if you are someone who is ignorant, and ignorant in the sense where you don’t know anything yet, then we’ll provide education for you.”
The organization has more than 2,500 volunteers working to develop the infrastructure of many countries, such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Haiti, Congo, Tanzania and Somalia. Citizens are aided in reaching self-sufficiency through health care, micro-loans for businesses and sustainable food, water and education  and other programs.
“We address these three major issues people have with becoming self-sufficient: the lack of health care, a lack of sustainable food and water, and a lack of education. Wings of Hope implements programs to conquer those deficiencies,” Clements said. “For sustainable food and water, we will teach people how to raise animals and plants on an organized basis so that they can provide food for themselves rather than having to look for food in the jungle. For health care, we will arrange for advanced health care, get them to that health care, and then we also teach them how to operate small clinics and hospitals that we help manage for them so they can provide for their own health care.”
The organization, founded in 1962, is the oldest and largest volunteer humanitarian and aviation based charity in the world. Despite growing over the years, the group still emphasizes its core values and ties to St. Louis, the site of its establishment.
“Wings of Hope is nonsectarian, nonpolitical, nonracial, and it’s an international organization, based in St. Louis, and it works to bring self-sufficiency to people in need,” Rutledge said. “In St. Louis, we have a free medical relief and air transport program, and that program is the only free air transport program in North America, and we serve 26 states from our base at Spirit of St. Louis airport.”
The organization helps more than one million people a year, spreading their influence around the world. Members of Wings of Hope assert that the difference being made exceeds the practical. The emotional strength they foster is equally valuable to those that they help.
“I think the most important things we do is to give people hope,” Clements said. “They have no opportunity to get healthy, no opportunity to get education, no opportunity for food, a job, or anything, and we feel very privileged to be able to expand the hand of human kindness to these unfortunate people, the most important thing we give them is hope. Without hope, human beings don’t do something that might pay a benefit tomorrow, or the next day, or a year from now. When you’re hopeless, you’ll live from moment to moment and it’s only when you have hope that you’ll work hard today to do some benefit to yourself.”
The organization has volunteers who are pilots, doctors, nurses, medics, mechanics, administrators, secretaries, janitors, and other positions needed to run a corporation. Because of this variety, many people can volunteer their services.
“I think it’s important that everyone knows that each of our volunteers is very, very important,” Clements said. “Without our volunteers, we could not do the work that we do; we can’t afford to pay people salaries, so we rely upon donations and volunteers to help the poor and needy around the world.”
While the nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize is flattering and indicative of the hard work the organization has put in, Wings of Hope doesn’t see this as a cap to their success.
“We are very proud of it, but, of course, our work will go on and there is always more to do, and like any organization, we get asked to do much more than we can do, and we always feel bad about that, so we always try harder to do more next week or next month, then we did this week,” Clements said. #