The Ronald McDonald House (“RMH”) provides a place to stay for families who must travel far from home to find treatment for their seriously ill or injured child. The Ronald McDonald House in Nashville, Tennessee, less than a mile from Vanderbilt’s Children’s Hospital, has been a temporary home to over 10,000 families since opening in 1991.
From sophomore through senior year of college, I volunteered at the Nashville RMH every week. It was there that I saw the profound impact it made on many people’s lives. Despite its 32 rooms, the RMH waiting list was many pages long, filled with families who couldn’t afford a place to stay while their child was in the hospital. Some families who were fortunate enough to get a room would stay for a few days, others would stay for months. Parents would often spend every waking hour in the hospital with their child, but the RMH provided meals, shelter and perhaps most importantly, other people to talk to away from the hospital. One reason I returned to volunteer every year was the incredible staff of ladies who worked at the house and took care of the families.
In this picture, the ladies are pointing at a leaf falling from “The Giving Tree.” In addition to our time, me and my friend, Greg, donated our money to the RMH and have the leaf to commemorate the monetary gift.
As Zhou and I travel around the world, we would like to promote the RMH and the difference it makes on the lives of families with seriously ill children. If you’d like to donate, there are several different ways that we encourage. You can donate any amount of your choice for:
1) Every 1,000 miles we fly
2) Every game of Scrabble we play
3) Every new food that Kevin eats
If you would like to donate based on one of the three categories above (or any of your own), we will be posting updates to our Stats page as we travel so you can see where we stand. Once you are ready to donate, you can find the form here or below. Under the “Donation Gift Recognition” headline, please say “My gift is in honor of: Kevin and Zhou’s world travels” or something to that effect. Most importantly though, we are simply trying to spread the word of the Ronald McDonald House and all the lives that it touches.
More information on the Ronald McDonald House can be found here, and the Nashville branch here.
