Charles Vanoy, the founder of Remede-Me, Inc. has always helped
people; especially those living in poverty. This is because
Charles is no stranger to poverty. Charles was born into a hard
working, poor West Virginian family that lived in a local coal
mining area. Within these coal mining camps, everyone was poor.
Even though Charles and his family were
poverty stricken, his mother insisted that he and his siblings
graduate from high school and encouraged them to go onto college.
After graduating from high school with honors, Charles landed
a job with a local firm and began saving money in order to attend
college. He first took courses at a local community college,
and then later transferred to the University of Cincinnati.
While attending college, he held a full time job.
It was during his college days, while working at General
Electric, that he began to realize his purpose in life; to help
others. It was at this time that Charles started saving sheets
of discarded, colored paper that the company used as separator
sheets from reports that were printed on high-speed printers.
Knowing that needy children attending local schools could use
the discarded, colored paper, Charles arranged to have the paper
delivered to local schools.
During this time, Charles took his first trip abroad. He visited
the Philippines, taking along a full box of the colored paper.
This paper was given to a school in the Philippines where the
school officials were very pleased to accept this gift due to
the paper’s high cost in that area. It was during this
trip that Charles saw a level of poverty that he had never seen
before. In fact, the deficiency in which Charles experienced
as a child was nothing compared to what he witnessed in the
Philippines.
Charles Vanoy returned to the United States to continue his
work and education, but he would never forget the disparity
he encountered while abroad.
A few years later, Charles traveled to Africa. With the images
still fresh in his mind of the Philippines, he took along boxes
of clothing, school supplies and candy for the children. Even
one of his two suitcases was packed with clothing for the needy
children of the area. Before leaving Africa, many of the local
artists gave Charles some of their artwork in order to sell
it for them and wire the money back to Africa. For many of these
artists, it was the first cash that they had seen in several
months.
Upon returning from Africa, Charles Vanoy had planned another
trip to the continent and loaded boxes with various items for
the African children. During his second trip, the children began
to beg for food, more clothing, school supplies and shoes. Charles
bought food for the children each day that he was there, and
provided some of the children with shoes, clothing and school
supplies that he had brought along. Unfortunately he could not
help all of the children during this trip; however he had promised
them that he would send more shoes and clothing after he had
returned to the States.
Today we are happy to report that this promise was kept, and
several forty-foot, ocean-going containers of shoes, clothing
and school supplies have been sent to these children in Africa.
However, now that our organization has grown, we must seek donations
to help us continue this work. We hope that you will make a
donation today to help us continue our work both here at home
and abroad.