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2011 Outstanding Humanitarian Service Award - Press Release
October 22, 2011

Mary Cathleen Schanzer, MD, was nominated by the Baylor Ophthalmology Alumni Association to receive this year's
Outstanding Humanitarian Service Award.

Dr. Schanzer is a medical director and chief surgeon at Southern Eye Associates in Memphis, Tenn., and mother to
seven adopted children. It was in the third grade, after listening to a missionary priest talk about his work and
adventures, that a powerful revelation grabbed her and she decided that her life's work would include being a medical
missionary. Her missionary work began 27 years later in 1988 in a small Nigerian village named Abak. She was
determined to make her first self-service mission opportunity the best it could be.

Dr. Schanzer's greatest missionary challenge came in 2004 when Sierra Leone's Archbishop asked her to establish a
medical/surgical eye clinic in his home village of Serabu. Serabu is located in a remote area of Sierra Leone, a
country recovering from a long and brutal civil war. Sierra Leone presented an enormous challenge because the
entire infrastructure of the country had been destroyed, including most of the nation's medical facilities. For the first
time in her missionary career, she would not be using an established facility with power, water and electricity
reasonably available. In 2006 all of the challenges were met for the opening of Southern Eye Clinic of Serabu. Water
wells were dug, generators were purchased and modern surgical equipment was installed. Her prayers were fulfilled
but because she did not have financial aid to support her work, her life savings had been depleted. Fortunately, last
year more than 400 people donated over 50 percent of the clinic's operating budget. Each year the resources for
Southern Eye Institute continue to grow.

The reputation of the Southern Eye Clinic of Serabu also continues to grow. Patients travel on foot for days from the
neighboring six countries in West Africa to have eye surgery by Dr. Schanzer. The surgical load has been so great
that, for the last five years, Dr. Schanzer has been traveling to Serabu twice a year to perform more than 200
surgeries per trip. These surgeries are in addition to the more than 1,000 clinic patients also treated. The clinic, with
its full-time staff of 17 employees, has expanded its operations to eight different villages. Southern Eye Clinic of
Serabu is open year round, providing eye care, medicine and glasses. All services, medicine, glasses and surgeries
are provided for free.

Dr. Schanzer is described as a humble and private person. Her efforts with the poor and the needy are part of her
spiritual nutrition. She represents the very highest elements of quality character with the exceptional training and the
compassion to share with those less fortunate, not only in America but abroad. The Academy is proud to honor Dr.
Mary Cathleen Schanzer with this year's Outstanding Humanitarian Service Award.
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Our Mission Trips

Memphis doctor and her husband run eye clinic in African village

By Erin Williams Special to The Commercial Appeal
December 1, 2012


Twice a year, a Memphis ophthalmologist and her husband travel to Africa to help Christians and Muslims see eye
to eye.

Literally. Dr. Cathy Schanzer and her husband, Tom Lewis, run the Southern Eye Institute, a nonprofit medical
mission that provides modern eye care to people who live in the remote village of Serabu in Sierra Leone.

"We're really strong Catholics, but we've grown to love the Muslims in this community," Schanzer said. "Before we
start the clinic, the Muslims and the Christians all pray together in the clinic. It's just gotten to be a routine that
prayer will always be in the clinic first thing in the morning."

Schanzer and Lewis opened the Southern Eye Clinic of Serabu in 2006. It's open year round and provides
diagnostic examinations, medicines, glasses and surgery free to all patients. It is not uncommon for patients to walk
several days to reach Serabu for their eye care needs. The clinic is staffed by 20 full-time employees who also
work at 10 satellite clinics in nearby villages.

Some locations have a cataract technician trained to remove large growths and treat other ocular infections and
glaucoma. But he's not as skilled or as fast as Schanzer. She visits the clinic twice a year, seeing and helping as
many patients as possible for two or three weeks. During her last visit, she performed 215 eye surgeries.

The clinic staff knows that when Schanzer is in town, they won't have time to see their families. "They can rest when
I leave," she said. "I actually thought I would be a full-time medical missionary. In my eyes, I've fallen a little bit short."

Schanzer dreamed of being a medical missionary since she was a child and heard a Maryknoll priest describe his
missionary adventures. In 1988, she and her husband traveled to Nigeria on their first medical mission. Over the
years, they have also worked in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Sierra Leone.

In 2005, Archbishop Joseph Ganda of Sierra Leone asked them to visit Serabu, which had no running water or
electricity. "I came back to him and said, 'Archbishop, you have got to be kidding,'" Schanzer said. Without
adequate facilities to support any serious medical work, Schanzer and Lewis gathered their savings and began to
establish one.

Tom, who has a background in hospital administration, supervised the renovation of a donated block building,
adding well-based water systems, generator electricity, patient examination areas, an optical dispensary and a
modern operating theater, complete with state-of-the-art technology and air conditioning.

The couple donate many of the clinic's medical and surgical supplies, and they are responsible for everything from
fixing broken equipment to funding employee salaries. They do receive donations of surgical supplies and medicine
from pharmaceutical companies, but it's not enough to cover the need, Schanzer said.

"I'm constantly worried about the money we make here in Memphis to be able to be sure that I can sustain the clinic
in the village," she said. "We do a lot of begging."

Rev. Bruce Nieli, a Paulist priest at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Memphis, joined the mission last June.

"The whole experience was Christians not only working together, but praying together," says Nieli, who served
alongside imams in Serabu. "That's highly unusual, for a Christian to lead prayer in a mosque, to be asked by the
imam to lead a prayer and to say a blessing — and to be applauded." But the mission is not about proselytizing,
Nieli says. "It was a mission of evangelization in the broader sense of communicating the good news of Jesus, but
especially through the vehicle of witness."

Schanzer and Lewis plan to return to Serabu on Jan. 3.

"It's God's work; he does the healing," Schanzer said. "We give him the praise and the glory, and that's what it's all
about."
Dr. Schanzer and team have
returned from their January trip to
Serabu. Update about their trip is
coming soon, stay tuned!
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