OUR HISTORY
COMPASSIONOW WAS BORN OUT OF AN URGENT DESIRE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE, NOW!
In 2002 and 2004, Ed and Wendy Bjurstrom traveled to Africa on mission trips and while there discovered not only the abject poverty but the great economic and healthcare divide between urban and rural Africa. If there are any African government funds for healthcare, it is usually spent in the urban areas. Most often the rural areas were left without adequate hospitals, doctors, and medicines.
People were dying or living maimed lives because of a lack of basic healthcare, medicines, and knowledge.
Because of his extensive work in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, Ed felt sure there was a way to provide help for the world’s least served. In 2006, Ed and Wendy founded CompassioNow, a 501(c)3 public charity, in order to aid existing clinics in their work to fight AIDS, poverty, and the lack of education when it comes to sanitation and healthcare.
One of the first clinics with whom CompassioNow partnered, 1000 Hills Clinic in Inchanga, South Africa, began as a feeding clinic inside of an abandoned church. Over the years, funding from CompassioNow has helped the medical clinic grow exponentially and today it serves a community of 47,000 people (mostly from the Zulu tribe).
Over the years, CompassioNow has come alongside several rural clinics and healthcare organizations in order to provide medicines, medical equipment such as birthing beds, dental chairs, and wheelchairs, medical supplies, staff salaries, and educational opportunities. These clinics include Mission Medic Air in Zambia, Tanzania Christian Clinic in Tanzania, Rwanda Children in Rwanda, Passion Center for Children in Malawi, Village of Hope Uganda in Uganda, 1000 Hills Community Helpers in South Africa, Lietnhom Primary Healthcare Clinic in South Sudan and Good Shepherd Clinic in Burundi.
CompassioNow has also provided funding for water pumps to provide clinics with clean water, a new engine for an airplane used to carry volunteer doctors and nurses into the bush for multi-day healthcare clinics, bicycles so that community healthcare volunteers can reach remote villages, vehicles to help move people and medical supplies, and Bibles.