Mercy Ships is an international charity that was founded in 1978 by Don and Deyon Stephens. Mercy Ships currently operates the largest non-governmental hospital ship in the world, providing free health care, community development projects, community health education, mental health programs, agriculture projects, and palliative care for terminally ill patients.
Mercy Ships has operated in more than 70 developing nations around the world, with a current focus on the countries of West Africa.
The organization has its International Operations Center (IOC) in Garden Valley, Texas. Mercy Ships also has 16 national resource offices in countries that include Spain, Britain, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, South Africa, and Australia.
A major inspiration for Mercy Ships founder and President Don Stephens was the work of the international hospital ship SS Hope. Stephens' research showed that 95 of the 100 largest cities in the world were port cities. Therefore, a hospital ship could deliver healthcare very efficiently to large numbers of people. The birth of Stephens' profoundly disabled son, John Paul, also inspired him to move forward with his vision of a floating hospital. A visit with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India, further deepened his commitment to serving the world's neediest people.
Read more about Mercy Ships: The Africa Mercy, Sierra Leone, Past Mercy Ships, Mercy Ships Statistics
Famous quotes containing the words mercy and/or ships:
“Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“I saw three ships come sailing by,
Come sailing by, come sailing by,
I saw three ships come sailing by,
On Christmas Day in the morning.”
—Unknown. As I Sat on a Sunny Bank. . .
Oxford Book of Light Verse, The. W. H. Auden, ed. (1938)