When She Saw the Trucks 

I was a volunteer the first time I saw RAM set up a clinic, back in 2013. I remember standing in a parking lot thinking I had underestimated what I was about to be part of. That feeling never entirely left me. But somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing it the way a new volunteer sees it for the first time. So I always ask new volunteers what it was like to arrive and see the clinic in action. 

Last weekend, in the triage section at our Miami Gardens clinic, I met Cindy, a retired licensed practical nurse from Bradenton, Florida who had driven four hours across the state to volunteer. We started talking, the way conversations happen at clinics, between the steady flow of patients. She told me about her years on medical missions in Uganda, Honduras, Haiti, and beyond. She has spent a long time bringing care to communities with almost nothing in the way of medical infrastructure. 

Miami Gardens was her second RAM Clinic. The first was in Tallahassee, more than five hours from her home, after she read a New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof about RAM’s work. She went to our website, created a volunteer profile, and signed up. The whole process took about twenty minutes. 

“It was a piece of cake,” she said. “Type a few things, check a few boxes, hit submit, and it was done.” 

She made the drive to Tallahassee, pulled into the parking lot, and saw the trucks. 

“The magnitude of it, when I saw the big trucks, I was just almost brought to my knees,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “When I saw what RAM brings. That big trailer full of everything, including lens production, and now I see dentures. It’s beyond amazing.” 

I knew exactly what she meant. 

Cindy has worked in Uganda. She has worked in Honduras and Haiti. She has stood in communities where going without medical care is just life. And when she volunteered in Tallahassee, she recognized something familiar. 

“The health conditions we see here are really no different than those that we see in places like Uganda or Honduras,” she told me. 

Cindy believes the barriers to care may actually be harder to break down here than abroad, because of the bureaucratic complexity patients have to navigate just to reach help that should be within reach. She has watched people in Uganda face enormous obstacles. She sees a different but equally stubborn set of obstacles here. 

RAM’s answer is to stop waiting for people to find their way through the system and go to them instead. Free care, delivered directly, without the cost and confusion that keep so many people away. 

“RAM serves a vital role in getting closer to where the people who need health care are and delivering it,” she said. 

That day in Miami Gardens, 442 volunteers helped 449 patients receive free dental, vision, and medical care. RAM provided $317,912 in care over the course of the clinic. Cindy was one of those 442 people, four hours from home, doing what she has spent years doing everywhere else. 

“Every five dollar donation, every five thousand dollar donation, makes those things possible,” Cindy said. 

Many people assume RAM is funded by government grants or a handful of major donors. In fact, roughly 75% of RAM’s funding comes from individual donors, giving what they can, consistently enough to keep the trucks moving.  

If you have been thinking about volunteering, the process is exactly what Cindy described. A few clicks and you are in. Every dollar donated moves the mission forward in a concrete way: fuel, supplies, equipment, logistics. And if something in this piece moved you, send it to someone who might care. That is how Cindy found RAM. She read an article, drove across the state of Florida to volunteer, and has not stopped since.