History of Children's Cross

Twenty-four years ago a young woman and her husband made a trip to Central America to pick up their new baby daughter from an orphanage in El Salvador. It was their first time to see the area, and the joy of welcoming this beautiful child into their family was colored by the burden of seeing a future of neglect and hardship for the children they must leave behind. Touring dilapidated buildings full of babies with little food and clothing, let alone medical attention, it was then that forensic psychologist LTC Pamela Rundle and dentist Dr. Kenneth Rundle committed themselves to helping children and their communities in struggling nations. Children’s Cross Connection International was founded.

The organization originally targeted orphanages – painting rooms, supplying materials, acting as the motivation and the agency by which individuals with means to serve could channel their excess monies or talent or time to those whose circumstances placed them in positions of need. As the program developed, the Rundles’ connections with medical professionals allowed them to expand to include a very successful medical arm in their ministry.

Over the past twenty years, Children’s Cross Connection International has established several thriving programs in both El Salvador and Ethiopia with a focus to provide aid that will promote self-sufficiency rather than dependency in these countries. Connecting doctors and hospitals stateside with already existing hospitals abroad, CCCI has brought over 600 children into the US for surgeries their native countries could not provide.

As the project grew, CCCI decided that, rather than merely supply medical services to a few children at a time in the States, it should enable national hospitals to perform the surgeries themselves, thereby reaching more patients and empowering an entire community to serve its own people. Through CCCI’s work at Hospital Benjamin Bloom, a pediatric charity hospital in El Salvador, there are now five training projects in various stages of completion, with medical personnel enabled through training and acquisition of medical equipment to perform pediatric congenital heart surgeries, pediatric spinal surgeries, pediatric kidney transplants, pediatric craniofacial surgeries, pediatric urology surgeries and soon a sixth to perform pediatric rheumatic heart corrective surgeries. CCCI is responsible for the very first open-heart surgery and pediatric kidney transplant in the country of El Salvador.

And there is more. In Ethiopia, CCCI has partner-sponsored Children’s Cross Connection Ethiopia, a national-run NGO that supports orphans and victims of HIV/AIDS in their community, and monitors the US-sponsored orphanage, Seeds of Hope.

Our newest venture, still in the planning and accumulating materials phase, is something we are calling Children’s Mobile Miracle Hospital, a dream that is beginning to take shape and would ultimately have a fully-equipped, fully-mobile pediatric hospital on every continent.

One might suppose that with all of these programs CCCI is a grand and glorious organization with many full-time paid staff positions. However, this is anything but the case. CCCI is run by a handful of individuals who have had the vision to employ hundreds of people leading normal lives to give a little or a lot of themselves to the service of others. This core group has dedicated itself to establishing and continuing this ministry, and has story upon incredible story of how great things have been accomplished through the lives of those who have joined in this venture.

CCCI is not a group of super-humans; we are as prone to mistakes, as vulnerable to hurt, as capable of selfishness and jealousies as any other, and perhaps more so. But we serve a great God, and by His grace we are able to see need and attempt to meet it. CCCI began with the goal of channeling excess to areas and people with no notion of excess, thereby aiding to establish organizations who provide life-changing services to their communities. We continue in this endeavor, and ask you to help us do so, whether it be through volunteer work, housing the children and doctors who pass through the States, sitting at hospitals, contributing funds or equipment to our project, or keeping us in your prayers.

Thank you for your interest in Children's Cross Connection Internation.

* CCCI Administration