- AmeriCares
- AmeriCares: History
- AmeriCares: Leadership
On April 4, 1975, when a U.S. jet with 243 Vietnamese orphans crashed in a jungle outside of Tan Son Nhut, the Pentagon said that they wouldn’t have the resources to rescue the children for 10 days. Robert C. Macauley, a paper broker from New Canaan, Connecticut, decided to take matters into his own hands. He chartered a Boeing 747 and rescued the survivors within 48 hours.
Then, having heard of his amazing feat, Pope John Paul II asked Mr. Macauley to Rome in
1981. He asked Mr. Macauley to help raise $50,000 to buy medical supplies for the people of Poland. Instead, they airlifted $3.2 million worth of aid to Poland!
Soon after, in 1982, Macauley realized that he could be using the same model to help people around the world, and AmeriCares was born.