5 Years and Half a Million Empowered by the Save a Life Initiative

By DisqueFoundationTeam
June 30, 2017

Fritz Disque posing with children on a previous volunteer trip in Ethiopia.

It is an exciting time here at the Disque Foundation as we celebrate our five year anniversary! We are reflecting on our past experiences and preparing for what is to come next.

The Disque Foundation began with the mission to empower others to save lives through education

Our founder and Executive Director, Dr. Fritz DIsque was serving in Haiti, along with other volunteer medical professionals from Rush University, after the 2010 earthquake. During his service, Dr. Disque witnessed the emergency C-section that gave birth to Maxwell, an infant that was born in need of pediatric advanced life support (PALS) moments after his delivery, but was with a nurse who had never received life support training. Upon showing the infant to a PALS trained health care provider, Maxwell received the medical attention that saved his life. The Disque Foundation now works to provide everyone with the life-support knowledge so that they have the ability to save a life.

The medical team helping with an infant on a previous volunteer trip in Haiti 2010.

So far, we have empowered 516,236 individuals to save a life, through our five annual trips, numerous CPR trainings, and online certifications. We have traveled to Cartago, Costa Rica, Bocas del Toro, Panama, Salcedo, Dominican Republic, New Orleans, Louisiana and Williamson, West Virginia, where we volunteered in the local community to provide medical assistance and health education.

In 2017 alone, we have had 16 CPR trainings with various organizations across the midwest. We have worked with the Habitat for Humanity and Arts United organizations in Fort Wayne to train their staff on how to perform CPR. Between the two groups, we taught around 60 individuals how to save a life. In the past, we have offered free CPR demonstrations to groups across the globe in Malaysia and the Philippines.

Mr. Disque demonstrating CPR techniques to a training class in Malaysia.

We have worked with groups in other ways aside from providing CPR trainings and medical assistance. We have also worked with the Ronald McDonald Houses in the midwest, holding events for the children and their families who reside in them. We have held bake nights, where the children baked and decorated cookies, carnival nights, where the children played fun carnival games, and even a marshmallow shooter night, where the children got to create their own marshmallow shooters and have a marshmallow war!

We hope by the year 2020 to have empowered 1 million people to save a life through the Disque Foundation Save a Life Initiative. How can we do this? Through YOU! By Creating relationships with the community, we can continue our efforts in traveling to underserved and remote parts of the world to provide health care education, medical care and support for those who need it most!