  On her most memorable Flexjet flight yet, Sandy Tytel wasn’t even on board. There probably wasn’t room, anyway. The entire aircraft was packed to the ceiling with medical supplies to help ease the suffering of people injured in Haiti’s devastating earthquake. “There was not an inch of space left on the plane. It was totally filled,” Tytel says.
The flight was the first time she has used her Flexjet share to deliver relief supplies, but it was by no means her first direct contribution to helping the less fortunate.
Sandy has chaired or served on the boards of a long list of organizations, but her work with former President Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative led to what may be her most fulfilling role – as an organizer and advocate for Doc to Dock, a nonprofit agency that distributes medical supplies to a growing list of countries around the world.
UNIMAGINABLE NEED
On a discovery trip to Africa, she and her daughter Jennifer learned firsthand how pressing those needs can be. They cried when they walked into a maternity ward – if one could call it that – in Kamasi, Ghana, where women gave birth on the floor, in unsanitary conditions. There was not even so much as a bed, much less the supplies and equipment that would be considered essential in the developed world.
Half a world away, U.S. hospitals every day throw away 7,000 tons of useable items such as unopened bandages, IVs, syringes – even beds, old-model sonogram machines and MRI machines. Tytel persuades hospitals to donate surplus supplies to Doc to Dock, which organizes the materials and then arranges to ship them where they are critically needed. “Our motto is, ‘Converting surplus into survival.’”
The organization transformed the hospital in Ghana with a wide range of supplies and equipment, including perfectly serviceable hospital beds that otherwise would have ended up in a landfill. The locals were so moved by this act of generosity that they named Sandy and Jennifer Queen Mothers of the Ashanti tribe.
ANSWERING THE CALL WORLDWIDE
Sandy says that experience was simply overwhelming. “It was very interesting to see such a different culture. These people are so dignified, even though they are consumed by poverty. They are very regal, and noble and proud.”
In just a few years, Doc to Dock has grown substantially. To date the organization has shipped tons of crucially needed supplies and equipment to 12 African nations, and had sent a major shipment to Haiti well before the earthquake. They plan to send more supplies as soon as the Port-au-Prince harbor reopens.
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