A brief history of Uplift International

Mark Schlansky was an executive in McDonnell Douglas’s (now Boeing) Washington, DC office, representing the company on international trade issues. In January 1995, he received a call from U.S. Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond of Missouri, on behalf of a constituent. Senator Bond asked for McDonnell Douglas’s help securing an airplane to deliver medicine and medical supplies.

Sen. Bond (left), Mark Schlansky (right)

Schlansky arranged the use of a McDonnell Douglas plane to Vietnam in April 1995, on the twentieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. This humanitarian mission to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City — carrying tons of medicine for the Vietnamese people – represented a significant public-private partnership to improve healthcare access to a vulnerable population. Inspired by the vast impact of this corporate donation, Schlansky launched Uplift International two years later. At the time, Uplift International focused on emergency humanitarian aid, corporate social responsibility and the development of health programs in low income countries.

Uplift International’s early programs were in Southeast Asia included:

• efforts to protect women’s reproductive health and improve child health
•  trainings about budgeting for reproductive health in Indonesian
• community participation in school health and nutrition programs in Indonesia
•  prevention of avian influenza in Indonesian high risk communities
•  emergency humanitarian assistance in response to natural and human-made disasters
• the first telemedicine between a U.S. hospital and a hospital in Vietnam

Today, Uplift International has expanded its scope of work to focus on creating solutions so all people have access to health services – including reproductive health.  Uplift does this by building rights-based health programs, creating bioethics training for  health and legal professionals, and convening reproductive health conversations across sectors.  See Past Programs