“After watching the Academy Award-nominated movie “Hotel Rwanda,” the 19-year-old from Mamaroneck, New York put his own challenges aside and joined a global humanitarian effort to ease the plight of orphans of the war-torn East African nation. His first step was to organize a benefit screening of the movie and give a presentation on the Rwanda situation at Crotched Mountain, the specialized New Hampshire school that he attends. Born with cerebral palsy, Miles uses a DynaVox DV4 to communicate and moves about in a wheelchair.
In the weeks after the benefit, Miles had the opportunity to meet Paul Rusesabagina, the charismatic hotel manager portrayed in the film who gave shelter to more than 1,000 displaced members of Rwanda’s Tutsi tribe whose lives were endangered by the militia of the Hutu tribe. Miles asked him if the tribe that slaughtered thousands of innocent people could be forgiven. Miles often repeats Rusesabagina’s response:
“He said, ‘We must forgive.”
Rusesabagina also expressed concern for human suffering from the effects of genocide in the Darfur region of the Sudan, inspiring a talk Miles gave at Crotched Mountain last spring on the violence occurring in Darfur and the relief effort sponsored by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. His co-presenters, three “Lost Boys of Sudan” who sought refuge in the United States when driven from their homeland in the early 1990s, now work as nursing aides at Crotched Mountain, which provides a range of services to individuals with disabilities.
While embracing the opportunity to make a difference, Miles understands the limitations of human nature. “The world is selfish,” he said. “In order to help others, people have to become activists.”
Besides serving as his voice, the DV4 has helped Miles with several aspects of the project – preparing presentations, writing invitations and thank-you notes, and maintaining a fundraising database – by allowing him to access his computer through the device. The next step is to post project updates on his personal website, said Pat Martin, a former computer access specialist in Crotched Mountain’s assistive technology unit, who has known Miles for three years. She admires the passion with which Miles approaches his work on behalf of the unfortunate, noting that it may stem in part from having relatives killed during the Holocaust.
“It’s close to his heart and close to his personal history,” she said. “Here’s this guy who could just be worried about himself and he’s using the technology and his good mind to help people. It affects everybody.”
The more than $2,500 that Miles has raised for the committee’s Rwanda and Darfur campaigns includes a contribution from DynaVox Technologies.”