MAJURO — Sometimes the death of a young family member galvanizes the family to take extraordinary steps to honor their memory as grief turns to motivation for action.
The Marshall Islands has one demonstration of this. The Nito Butterfly Foundation, a Marshall Islands non-profit, and its companion Nito’s Wings Foundation, a California-based non-profit. Together they combine to provide an amazing array of support to healthcare systems in the Marshall Islands — all to honor the memory of Ceihera Toni Miyoko “Nito” deBrum Kedi. She is the great granddaughter of the late Marshall Islands Climate Ambassador Tony deBrum.
Nito died a few days before her fourth birthday in 2016 from a rare blood disorder at Majuro hospital.
The Nito Butterly Foundation web page notes: “Family and friends launched the Nito’s Butterfly Foundation or NBF on the first anniversary of her passing.”
Three years later, in 2020, American nurse Deborah Yoder established the Nito Butterfly Foundation partner organization in California, calling it Nito’s Wings.
The two have partnered to provide a steady stream of donations of healthcare supplies and equipment, focused on pediatrics care, to the Marshall Islands — to the hospitals and outer island clinics and communities. The latest example is a donation of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of healthcare supplies to outer island local governments for remote populations delivered at the end of January.
“The Nito Foundation has been an incredible help to our hospital,” said Health Secretary Jack Niedenthal in a social media post this past weekend.
Tony deBrum’s daughter, Ambassador based in Geneva Doreen deBrum, explained the reasons behind the founding of the organization in Nito’s honor.
She was “born on Papa’s (Tony deBrum’s) birthday, February 26,” said Doreen, who is Nito’s grandmother. “Thus the name Ceihera Toni deBrum Kedi.”
But Doreen’s mother, Rosalie, couldn’t refer to the newborn great granddaughter by her name, Toni. “Mama couldn’t call her by her name Toni because she never called Papa by his first name…it was always Jera, so she flipped her name and called her Nito,” recalled Doreen.
Nito’s short life was intertwined with her great grandfather Tony’s outsized role in the COP21 global climate summit in Paris in 2015 that resulted in the Paris Climate Agreement, still the benchmark for global climate action.
“After the COP in Paris (Dec 2015) which resulted in the Paris Agreement, Nito was curious where Papa and I went to,” Doreen said. “She ‘interviewed’ Papa and he told her about Paris, climate change, who he met and showed her pictures. She immediately fell in love with the Eiffel Tower. Her birthday was coming up.
“From that day forth, she woke both Papa and myself every morning reminding us that she wanted to have her birthday in Paris. She wanted to become a butterfly and fly to the Eiffel Tower. We actually got her a passport to prepare her for her birthday at the Eiffel Tower.”
But it was not to be. Nito died of a rare blood disorder on February 6, 2016 20 days shy of her fourth birthday.
It is these conversations with Nito in the final months of her life that both led to the founding of the organization and the inclusion of the Eiffel Tower and a butterfly on the foundation’s logo.
Nito Butterfly Foundation’s partner organization, Nito’s Wings, was formed by Deborah Yoder, who has a long connection to the Marshall Islands. She lived on two remote outer islands teaching in local elementary schools in 1996-1997.
But she developed typhoid fever on Arno Atoll and a few days after getting sick, found herself hospitalized in Majuro for almost a week when she was told she was dying. She signed herself out of the hospital in Majuro against medical advice in an attempt to obtain higher-level care in the United States. It was a risky option that she decided to take, and a luxury not available to most people in the Marshall Islands, she said.
Fast forward 20 years, and Deborah was back in the Marshall Islands working at Majuro hospital as a volunteer nurse when she met Nito in Majuro hospital the day before she died. “Nito was in the same hospital room where our Ms. Yoder had once lay as a patient,” says the webpage of Nito’s Wings, the non-profit group she established three years ago. “Although almost 20 years separated her experience from Nito’s, as Ms. Yoder looked around the hospital room it seemed very little had changed in the resources available to help providers care for their patients.”
“In February 2016 my heart broke at the bedside of Nito,” Yoder said. “As a flight nurse and critical care nurse my heart understood there was more that could have been done had the resources been available to the local providers. As I sat in my hotel room the night after she died, everything in me knew that doing everything possible to help prevent situations like hers from happening in the future was a calling my heart would need to answer.”
In pointing out lacking equipment and supplies at the hospital in 1996 and again in 2016, Deborah also made the point: “What had also not changed was the hearts of the providers there trying everything they could to save lives with what they had available.”
By establishing Nito’s Wings as a U.S. 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, the organization is able to provide donors with tax deductions for making donations. It has facilitated the dozens of donations that the two Nito foundations have made to Majuro hospital and remote islands to improve access to equipment and supplies over the past six years.
Nito Butterfly Foundation of Majuro has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and supplies to Majuro hospital in recent years, including the one pictured in October 2022. Marshall Islands Ambassador Doreen deBrum, grandmother of Nito, and daughter of the late Climate Ambassador Tony deBrum, is at right with family members.
American nurse Deborah Yoder, left, who founded a U.S.-based non-profit known as Nito’s Wings, was in Majuro earlier this month to deliver a large donation of healthcare supplies for outer island communities and clinics. She hands over supplies to Aur Atoll Mayor Fred Bukida.
Lily Jurelang, left, and Marshall Islands Ambassador Doreen deBrum, center, head Nito’s Butterfly Foundation in Majuro. They partner with American Deborah Yoder, who established the non-profit Nito’s Wings in California.
