During the mid 1990s, Elissa Montanti approached the then United Nations Ambassador to find ways in which she could help the children of the war in Bosnia. She began by helping Kenan Malkic, a grievously wounded boy of the Balkan Wars, receive prosthetics. Elissa then began to recruit airlines, hospitals and a prosthetic company to donate their services to the other wounded children of Bosnia. Extending her commitment to child victims of war and natural disasters, she traveled to Bosnia, visiting orphanages and hospitals. Based upon what she had witnessed, Elissa founded the Global Medical Relief Fund (GMRF).
Elissa has brought together a unique team to work in conjunction with GMRF: The Mission at Mount Loretto, in Staten Island, provides the GMRF with shelter for the children and their guardians during their stay in the United States. Both Ikea and Home Depot generously have refurbished the facility for GMRF, making it a happy and bright home away from home for its young patients and their parents. The Shriners Children's Hospital in Philadelphia has given unwavering commitment and focus on each young child, providing surgery, prosthetics and rehab. Similarly, Columbia University-Presbyterian donates medical assistance for eye injuries.
The original inspiration for the GMRF, Kenan has become Elissa’s miracle, and she has virtually adopted him long after she helped his family obtain prosthetics for him. Today, Kenan lives with Elissa while attending college in the US. Her project has helped children in countries all over the world, including Bosnia, El Salvador, Liberia, Mexico City, Niger, Sierra Leone, Iraq, and the Tsunami-ravaged Indonesia. Her work continues apace. Elissa will soon bring a nine-year-old and two eleven-year-old children of the Pakistan earthquake to America for treatment and shelter. Each child Elissa brings to the U.S. becomes in turn an Ambassador, taking back with him or her not only a mended body and a renewed life, but also a new perspective of America’s best aspirations.
Her recent visits to Iraq only confirmed to Elissa that God does, in fact, have other plans for her. She knows that humanitarian aid is so much larger than one person’s passion and efforts. Elissa feels blessed in her life that has granted her health, food to eat, and a roof over her head. And for these blessings, Elissa Montanti feels she has been granted the greatest of all: an appreciation of just how complex and fragile the world is. In her struggle to make a difference for the better, Elissa Montanti has come to believe that healing wounds and easing pain in the world is its own truly wondrous reward.
To learn more about Elissa and her cause, and how you can make a difference, please visit: www.globmed.org.
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