Help Angie teach lifesaving surgeries in Ethiopia

Our dear friend Angie Hengelmann is a surgical technologist, which means she spends her days, nights + weekends helping save lives and significantly improving the quality of life for those in medical need.

Since 2019, she has been traveling to Ethiopia with a barebones volunteer team to teach local surgeons and nurses how to perform critically needed total joint surgeries, specifically hip surgeries.

Angie will be embarking on her FIFTH (5th!) round of volunteer training in Ethiopia this November, and is looking to raise the funds needed to make this possible. The previous source of funding is no longer available, and the other surgeons on the team will be self-funded and paying their own way while also going out of pocket to purchase direly needed medical equipment for the Ethiopian facilities.

Her team has been providing local physicians with the skills, tools and methodologies needed to perform hip surgeries for fractures that would otherwise go untreated and worsen, often resulting in death. Humans who would have otherwise been condemned to a solitary bedridden existence can now walk, dance and function in an entirely different way than was possible before. They’re given a brand new chance at life in a very mobile, very active society. Angie makes that happen for total strangers desperately in need on the opposite side of the world, and to hear her describe it, it’s one of her happiest places on Earth. It serves her soul and she feels blessed to find personal joy and fulfillment while also doing so much significant, life-changing good for so many others.

The team will be gone for about 10 days, including 2 long days of travel in each direction, with a week of performing as many surgeries and demonstrations as they can fit in within that week. Physicians from other hospitals travel in from around the country for the chance to train with this team, it’s a big deal anytime this opportunity is made available to the Ethiopian medical community.

As the sole surgical technologist on the team, Angie trains local nurses firsthand in proper surgical techniques, teaching them every step of the surgery from opening to closing, pre-op, post-op, scrubbing in, proper instrumentation usage, expected communication with other physicians and most importantly, she has developed and enforced a critically needed standard of sterility that simply did not exist before, which is especially important in hip surgeries. The nurses are equipped and empowered to continue performing these surgeries and providing the medical care the local community so desperately needs for countless patients long after Angie and the team have gone home. It is remarkable what a longstanding, reverberating difference any one person’s efforts can make.

Your donation will help cover virtually all of Angie’s simple functional costs including: roundtrip airfare to and from Ethiopia, hotel, daily driver, food, petcare and compensation of missed wages. Angie was ideally hoping to do this using unpaid time off on a full volunteer basis, so any funds raised over the costs of transport, food, lodging and petcare will be used to cover her everyday bills and responsibilities back home for the nearly 2 weeks she is taking herself out of work rotation and not receiving her regularly budgeted-for paycheck. Any additional funds that might be raised over those costs would be used to fund future rounds of volunteering as she would love to do this again and again, as possible.

Angie was initially discouraged to learn the previous source of funding was gone, thinking she would never return to Ethiopia due to the costs being too significant to fully fund on her own. I gently reminded her that she is a member of a beautifully generous community, one who looks after others and encourages us to find our place in the world where we can be of most service. *This* is what she chooses to do with her talents and free time?! It’s remarkable. She is volunteering and donating her invaluable knowledge, skillsets, efforts, energy and time to this incredible cause, and I encourage us all to look within and donate whatever amount you feel comfortable towards getting Angie back to Ethiopia, back to where she can make this specific, profound difference in the world. Any amount helps.

We’re all looking for ways to contribute to the global greater good, and here is a real, tangible opportunity to do so directly. Passionate medical professionals who otherwise would not have this opportunity will expand their knowledge base and skillsets significantly thanks to these trainings. People who were on the path to death will be given another chance at life thanks entirely to these efforts. Thank you for whatever you feel comfortable donating to get Angie back to Ethiopia with her team to help countless folks in desperate need.

Also, anyone who knows Angie knows that her energy is vibrant and pure. She loves sharing love with others, and will hug anyone who will let her. She brings an important, heart-focused balance to an otherwise impersonal, clinical environment, and her bold energy is embraced and fully appreciated. She sings often and loudly, and the lead surgeon loves to tease Angie saying the Ethiopians think Phish is the only band in America considering how often Angie plays/sings/talks about them! That is adorable beyond words, and exemplifies how truly herself our bright shiny friend feels over there. I’m happy she’s found her happy place, let’s get her back to where she can make her beautiful, indelible difference.

Angie herself did not know how to ask for this assistance, so I am doing so on her behalf.

If you have any questions, please feel free to send them our way.

Let’s please help our friend help others help others.

Thank you so sincerely for your consideration.

If you would prefer to send Angie money directly, her Venmo is @Angie-Hengelmann

Thanks + love,

♥️ ~mags + angie