Angiolini sisters spend winter break helping S.A.V.E organization

By Emily Koncki

Staff Writer

Sisters Becky and Emily Angiolini took the term “be the change you want to see in the world” and put it into action. In January they traveled halfway around the world to help make a change in the world.

Over winter break, junior Emily Angiolini and freshman Becky Angiolini traveled to Burma, Yangon, and Taunggyi, Thailand with an organization called Student Action Volunteer Effort (S.A.V.E.) They went to assist the doctors by performing simple medical tasks and give suffering children medical attention and help.

“I have always wanted to go on a mission trip, and when I heard about this one I really wanted to do it,” Becky Angiolini said. “When my mom said me and my sister were going I couldn’t wait for what I knew was going to be the experience of a lifetime.”

S.A.V.E. was established in 2006 by Dr. Marna Giesler, a pediatrician in Santa Monica. Since then, the organization has held annual trips, including a medical team and a group of high school students. Being a pediatrician, Giesler deals with kids on the daily and likes having them on the trip with her. Most of the students asked to travel with Giesler are her patients.

“I found out about the trip from our physical therapist who has been going on the trip for the past six years,” Becky and Emily’s mother, Vanessa Kohler, said.

The mission of S.A.V.E. is to provide hundreds of people with free healthcare who wouldn’t be able to afford it otherwise. The process is a selective one because it is easier to travel on buses, boats, and planes, in a smaller group. The students also get more hands on experience if the group isn’t large.

“Everyday I would get a detailed message informing me about what the girls did that day: wound care, tooth pulling, ear wax center,” Kohler said. “It brought tears to my eyes and I’m so grateful my girls could participate in something where giving proves to be so much more rewarding than receiving.”

The main purpose of the trip is to help the underprivileged kids and people in Burma. The students, in particular, that go are also able to see how other people around the world live and how different it is from their lives.

“While we were there we visited different orphanages everyday and set up medical stations wherever they would tell us to, some even outside,” Emily Angiolini said. “The day I got to work with the dentist was awesome because I got to pull teeth!”

Emily and Becky traveled with the program to different orphanages everyday with the same plan. First they set up their stations, ranging from wound care to pharmacy. Then, a translator found out all the kids names, weights, ages and any other basic information needed so they could record the information into medical books.

“The first orphanage we saw had over 900 kids, so we were there for two days to get to them all,” Emily said. “We would work from morning to night almost non stop with only a lunch break and every day of work our leader, Nancy, would give us a new position to work at.”

The kids were first sent to doctors that would give them a check up and decide whether they needed to visit other stations, for more intensive care. Emily and Becky were busy at the stations which was where they were able to help out.

“It made me realize how lucky and privileged we are to even have a roof over our heads and food on the table,” Emily said. “Visiting this third world country really opened my eyes to how demanding and spoiled we are.”