At this year’s Healthy Women, Healthy World luncheons we’re celebrating the power of connection. From the first moments of life, we reach for one another’s hands. Whether it’s friend to friend or parent to child, holding hands says: I’m here. I’ve got you. You’re not alone. 

Few people know better how important and powerful the connection between people can be like Helen Manson. A multi-award-winning New Zealand humanitarian photographer and storyteller, she’s been around the world documenting humanity in some of the most challenging environments possible. From refugee settlements to disaster zones, she’s borne witness to the strength and courage of people in unimaginably difficult times.

We’re honored to have Helen as our keynote speaker at our luncheon this year! She’ll share stories and photos from her time on the ground with Medical Teams in Uganda, Tanzania, and Lebanon. She also served as the keynote speaker at our 2021 Healthy Women, Healthy World Virtual Luncheon. She spoke of the life-saving medical care she saw firsthand and the people who left a lifelong impression on her heart. Portions of her speech are shared below.

Don’t miss the chance to connect with Helen and hear our inspiring line-up of speakers at this year’s luncheons! Join us in Portland at Amaterra Winery on September 19 or in Seattle at The Golf Club at Newcastle on September 16.

Read a portion of Helen’s keynote speech from 2021 below! You’ll soon see what a compassionate and compelling storyteller she is.

Behind the lens with Helen

Tonight, I want to take you with me on a journey both behind the lens and behind the curtain of the work that Medical Teams International does. I’ve seen their work firsthand in action in multiple countries. So I’m going to take you with me on a trip to Uganda and Tanzania, and I’m going to tell you exactly what I saw. I’ll share the important context behind it, and who I met. Most critically, I’ll do my honest best to show you the realities of the rollercoaster the Medical Teams doctors, nurses, and staff get on every single day. Ready? Here we go.

In early 2018, I was contacted by the country director of Medical Teams International in Uganda to say that he’d like me to capture the work his team was doing on the Congolese border with refugees. In the weeks that preceded this, Congolese refugees had begun fleeing across the border as rebels started burning down houses and killing anyone who got in their way. I headed out on a tiny five-seater plane a couple weeks later.

For most of the year, an average of 50 people crossed the border from Congo to Uganda each day. But in those last few months, a whopping 500 were crossing each day in a sudden influx. Thousands upon thousands of families would now wait up to a week at a transit center before being transported to the nearest refugee settlement, about a 7-hour drive away. Medical Teams International were the ones that greeted them on arrival. They were (and still are) the provider of health and nutrition services for newly arriving Congolese refugees and at the time were scrambling to scale up as fast as possible to meet the overwhelming need.

On touch down I asked to be taken directly to the border so I could see for myself what it was like for people arriving.

What I saw were absolutely exhausted men, women, teenagers, children and the elderly coming on foot carrying all the possessions they had to their name on their backs.

Many had no shoes anymore. They were thirsty, hungry, worn out, and gutted. One by one, they boarded a large, dusty U.N. truck to the transit center. As the truck rumbled down the road and I stood in the back with them, no one spoke. I was struck by the somberness of the moment as the country they had lived and built a life in went further and further out of view.

Taking it all in, I slowly wandered. From tent to tent, makeshift building to makeshift building, temporary shelter to permanent shelter observing all that was going on. I saw a woman silently giving birth, two staff members helping her. I saw families, huddled together. In one ten, I walked in to see a small commotion happening. Turns out a 1-week-old baby had been abandoned and hadn’t been fed since the night before. The people that brought the baby over to the staff said the mother had left very early in the morning and taken her belongings. She wasn’t coming back. That hit me hard.

Medical Teams at work in Uganda

In one of the buildings, I watched as an 18-month-old, too weak to stand, was weighed in at 13.6 pounds because of malnutrition. An exhausted grandmother waited ever so patiently for the Medical Teams doctor to give her Plumpy’Nut. Plumpy’Nut is used as a treatment for emergency malnutrition cases. It supports rapid weight gain by giving a child lots of nutrients in a paste like form from a tear open package. Sometimes kids are so weak they can’t even chew.

This really simple, basic intervention can stop a starving child from impending illness or death.

I remember thinking, ‘Thank goodness Medical Teams is there.’

Finally, I made my way over to the line for the Office for the Prime Minister. The sheer numbers and the smell were overwhelming. It was there I spotted a group of four young boys aged 6-12 huddled together and all alone. I enquired as to their situation and discovered they had arrived without parents at the camp. They were unaccompanied minors. Three of them were in matching t-shirts, and it took everything in me to stop the tears from falling as I looked at how scared and vulnerable they were in that moment.

Who would help them get food? Who would give them a blanket to sleep under? Who would kiss them as they went to sleep that night? The local staff worked with the U.N. to find a foster grandmother for the interim.

You need to know that Medical Teams is large and powerful in Uganda. It numbered 1,500 staff throughout the country when I was shooting these images. And most of those staff were on the front lines of the refugee crisis, whether that was on the border of Congo or South Sudan. They were efficient and effective and had their work down to a fine art. They were caring and kind, while also firm about procedures and practices being at the highest standard possible in this unique situation. The context within which they were working was all consuming and exhausting and most staff were working long days. As I left I remember feeling so grateful that the people coming over the border were falling into the arms of an integrous, honest organization like Medical Teams. I saw people who were doing the best they could to keep refugee families alive and healthy.

Medical Teams in Tanzania

I was also lucky enough to visit Medical Teams in Tanzania. After a hard day, I decided to go check in on some of the mothers that we had spoken to in labor the day prior. I walked in the door, was given a pair of gumboots, and told to head into the labor room. And within minutes I watched twins come into the world. The twins were a surprise. The mother had no idea.

It’s hard to wrestle with both the tragedy of death and the celebration of new life within 10 minutes of each other, but I guess that’s the business end of hospitals and the truth of what Medical Teams does. Just when this world seems ruined beyond repair, a baby is born. Before this hospital and the many others now in the camps were there, lives that could have been saved were lost for stupid reasons like medication for malaria wasn’t available.  Now, that is not the case. If someone gets a treatable illness like malaria or pneumonia, they have a good chance of survival and the drugs to help them.

I count it as one of the most incredible privileges to be asked to help bring these stories to life. To shine a light on some of the darkest places in our world and to share the work of remarkable NGO’s like Medical Teams giving everything they’ve got. I have no answers for you or myself as to why things are the way they are. I have hope though. I see it in the faces of staff committed to working around that clock to bring healing. I see it in the relief on a mothers face as she’s given medicine to care for her precious baby. The simplicity and dignity of that is not lost on me. I see it in the bouncy nature of little children running around after homemade soccer balls because the care they received at a Medical Teams clinic was the difference between life and death for them last week. Please know your love, action, donations and prayers for these people is felt and makes an impact beyond what you could ever imagine.

There’s a quote that reads:

“Sometimes I’d like to ask God why He allows poverty, suffering, and injustice when He could do something about it. But, I’m afraid he’d ask me the same question.”

I think about this quote all the time.

Just like you and I

Before I started doing humanitarian photography and storytelling, my honest temptation was to imagine that people who endured such things “on the news” were somehow different to me. Maybe somehow they don’t feel things like I do, maybe these mums get used to it, maybe they expect less, care less, want less, need less, or even feel less. But painfully, over time, I have come to see that they are exactly like me. And what they endure as mothers living in poverty is in no way easier for them just because they are poor.

I invite you to join us on a journey to bring healing to a hurting world. We invite you into a story of an organization that is packing a serious punch. We invite you into a community of women helping other women and the little ones they love too.

See Helen Manson speak

Don’t miss Helen Manson share more of her stories and extraordinary photographs at this year’s Healthy Women, Healthy World luncheons! Make sure you get your tickets soon — they will likely sell out. Enjoy a wonderful afternoon of inspiring speakers, a delicious lunch, and time spent in the company of compassionate women who care about women and children around the world.

Buy your tickets for Portland on September 19 or Seattle on September 16 today!

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Helen Manson

Helen Manson is a multi-award-winning Kiwi humanitarian photographer and storyteller. Helen’s work has taken her around the world to some of the most challenging environments documenting famine, refugee settlements, post war environments, child sponsorship, micro-enterprise, trauma counselling and disaster zones. When she’s not “shooting in the field,” you’ll find her on a bike ride with her husband and three kids around Auckland’s beaches in beautiful New Zealand.