Harper speaker calls on those willing to help

People around the world, from the poorest countries to the richest, are pretty much all the same.

That is the overriding lesson Dr. Richard Heinzl, founder of the Canada branch of Doctors Without Borders, imparted to Harper College students and suburbanites at a recent lecture.

"This is a big wide world that we are all a part of," Heinzl said in imploring several hundred in attendance to explore it. "Those people out there far, far away are not so different from us."

Heinzl gave a lecture on his life's work with the humanitarian group that provides health care to impoverished and war-torn regions, including Iraq, Sudan and Sri Lanka.

To many attendees, Heinzl's call for a career helping humanity instead of pursuing wealth resonated.

"That is what I'm looking for," said Ron Weisbarth of Schaumburg. Weisbarth is in his first semester of the nursing program at Harper in Palatine.

"The whole thing is actually very appealing," he said of the doctors' organization.

Heinzl was also promoting his new book, "Cambodia Calling," which is based on his years working as a doctor in a war-torn city in the Southeast Asia country. Heinzl has been involved with humanitarian work in such regions since he entered school.

Overall, Heinzl outlined how he lived for years in impoverished regions of the world, earning little money but growing rich in experience and the knowledge he was helping. He discussed how poor regions are cut off from technology and how war drives educated people from their homelands, leaving behind thousands ill-equipped to advance the society and address diseases.

He also noted most of the population in such areas are predominately young.

"Children are the same all around the world," he said. "They are smart and energetic just like all the students here at Harper."

Heinzl stressed that students in the suburbs, much like him, could help those children if they tried.

"What a tremendous amount of potential everyone here has," he remarked, "to make a difference in the world."

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