By Margaret Cornelius, Board Chair, Watsi | March 27th, 2025
During my daily and usually failed attempts to get a handle on my email inbox, I saw a message: “Update on your donation to Janet,” 👇 from watsi.org, a health nonprofit I work with as a volunteer and donor.
As a board member, I frequently exchange notes with the Watsi team, but I will admit that I don’t always look too closely at the emails I receive as a donating member of Watsi’s Universal Fund.
For those of us lucky enough to live in places where technology guides almost every waking moment (and maybe even sleeping moments if you’re tracking your sleep or monitoring a newborn in another room), it’s easy to forget that many people around the world aren’t plugged into the networks, connections, and resources that many of us click on multiple times a day to help us get what we need, whatever they might be.
But there’s a downside too: as my email inbox sadly demonstrates, many of those clicks are not always generating things I really need or want to read. Or worse, the inbox is a glaring reminder of all the things I haven’t done or feel like I can’t do, or can’t get me much in terms of a ‘win’ for the day.
And yet….
Today, I did open that Watsi e-mail. And I read the “Update on Your Donation to Janet” message in full. Multiple times.
I looked at the photos; I warmed myself in Janet’s wide smile, taking note of her beautiful braids that matched her shirt, and imagined her playing with her daughter at home and then getting up the next morning to get back to her job, which she said she was eager to do in her note to her supporters. I said a silent ‘thank you’ to her medical team and the other Watsi donors who helped fund the hysterectomy she needed.
I even clicked on the other donors’ individual Watsi profiles to see how long they’d been supporting Watsi, where they resided, and how many patients they’d helped. Many of these donors have been with Watsi for over a decade, and collectively have funded surgeries for thousands of patients. I thought about all the individuals whose lives have been bettered because of a few ‘clicks’ on a website, and found myself awed by the power of this kind of clickable ‘win’.
This moment in my inbox helped me remember that sometimes the simplest solution is the one with the most fulfilling reward, especially when everything around me feels incredibly complicated and overwhelming.
Watsi.org is - at its simplest - a tech platform that moves resources from places of ‘plenty’ to places of ‘need’ - driven always by the mission of getting donations to patients for surgery as quickly and transparently as the technology allows.
Indeed, in less time than it would take me to order groceries online, I can fund a patient on Watsi’s website. There is no feeling better than doing something that is so fast, and so easy, and with such impact.
As Janet’s update proved to me today, being a Universal Fund donor is even easier - I get to see how someone has been impacted through my contribution, and all I have to do is open an email.
A clickable win and reason to keep an eye out for more Watsi updates in my inbox!
As of this writing, Watsi has gathered over $18M in contributions directly supporting 30,000+ patients around the world, with incalculable benefits to patients’ own lives, their families, and their communities.
The Watsi Team
Everyone deserves healthcare.