8th Campaign Torch of Life
TORCH OF LIFE JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD
OCT 29 2011
Two of the world’s most famous organ donor fathers joined forces in Canada on a humanitarian mission to boost our low rates of organ & tissue donation and to launch important proposed Ontario Bill
Both men have traveled around the world for organ donation since their sons were killed but this was the first time they met. Their stories, which captured the world’s imagination, show in the most dramatic way that, besides saving multiple lives, an organ donation can bring people together all over the world.
About Reg Green
One of the men is Reg Green, who lives in Los Angeles and whose seven-year-old son, Nicholas, was shot by masked men in southern Italy in an attempted robbery as the Green family drove along the main highway towards Sicily. Nicholas’ organs and corneas went to seven Italians, four of them teenagers. Since then organ donation rates in Italy have quadrupled, so that thousands of people are alive who would have died. Maggie Green, the mother, when asked by a reporter, what she would tell the killers, replied “When they see what they have done, I hope they will turn away from this kind of life.”
Famed Italian TV host Maurizio Costanza, said “Today we learned a lesson in civility.”
About Ismail Khatib
The other father is Ismail Khatib, a Palestinian, whose 12-year-old son, Ahmed, was shot in 2005 by an Israeli soldier who thought he had a gun. It turned out to be a toy gun. The Khatib family donated the boy’s organs to six Israelis, two (?) of them Jewish. Later Ismael opened the Ahmed Khatib Center for Peace in the Jenin refugee camp to provide children in the camp with an alternative to life on the streets.
On November 11 2011, Ismail left his 20 year old son Khald with George Marcello, and as he departed for home in Palestine, said please look after my son & have him spread the message of organ donations in Canada.
George crowned his newest Torch Bearer
On March 2 2012, Khaled began a four month, 72 city / town Torch Tour in Ontario. The name of this campaign was called Register Now Ontario, and Khaled spoke to thousands of students throughout the Province. He carried the Torch for a young Canadian girl that needed lung transplant and in memory of Mrs Betty Albrecht. Her husband MP Harold Albrect and his family carried out her wish to donate her organs, and lives were saved . On his last day in Toronto on June 19, 2012, he was joined by Helene Campbell and 20 year old Jewish Girl, Yael Gladstone, whose brother Yoni, was killed by a Palestinian Suicide Bomber, in Tel Aviv. Her family donated his kidney to a young Palestinian Girl. All 3 carried the Torch Of Life to the finish line at Queen’s Park. The Province of Ontario had a record year for Organ registration.
On February 5, 2013, Khaled began an 18 day, 500 kilometer walk marathon in the freezing dead part of the winter. He wanted to find a kidney transplant for his Canadian friend Anthony Socci.
