What Is "BlueHealers"?
How It Began
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What Is "BlueHealers"?
Blue Healers is a nonprofit site created to raise awareness and financial support for MMI's medical mission projects in Bolivia. Blue Healers admittedly targets Duke Basketball enthusiasts but is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Duke University or its athletic programs. All proceeds go directly to MMI and no donated funds are handled by Blue Healers in any way.
How It Began
As a Duke graduate who relocated last year to become the anesthesiologist at a Western North Carolina hospital, I immediately joined the Iron Dukes and ordered basketball tickets. After making the five hour drive from my home to Durham for the first few games, I realized that season tickets were not all that practical at this point in my life. While preparing for MMI's January 2006 project in Bolivia, I decided to auction a few pairs of tickets through Duke Basketball Report to help raise financial support for the project. Those auctions, along with a few other pairs of tickets that I gave to friends in exchange for donations to MMI, provided funds which were essential in helping us to perform sixty-nine major surgeries on that project.
With the Iron Dukes renewal deadline for basketball tickets approaching this past summer, I strongly considered declining to renew and instead giving that donation directly to MMI. After much deliberation, I elected to continue my financial support of Duke athletics, reorder basketball tickets, and again auction the tickets that I could not use to help MMI's efforts in Bolivia. While James Armstrong and the others at Duke Basketball Report were again very generous and helpful in offering to auction the tickets through their excellent website, I felt that creating a seperate site could help those interested in tickets to have a better understanding of where their money would be going. Additionally, I hoped that other Duke graduates might become interested in participating in medical mission projects in Bolivia or elsewhere. Rather than removing the tickets for those games which I planned to attend from the auction page, I have decided to make all of the tickets available for auction. I will bid right along with you for tickets. While I run the risk of being disappointed if I am unable to go to a game I had picked out, I will be thrilled to have recruited another contributor to such a worthy cause.
Site Contents
You are now looking at the result of many hours in front of my laptop, teaching myself HTML (thanks, Dave) and putting together this site. I encourage you to visit the project galleries, participate in basketball ticket auctions, or even join us on a project if you feel so inclined. I have also included links to various Duke basketball websites for any visitors who may not be familiar with all of them. I hope you enjoy your visit.