Sara's Wish Foundation

03/18/2026

March 27, 2026 marks 30 years since we lost Sara. In her memory, we’re coming together to honor her life and to spread awareness of our important motto: Sit, Click and Ride. It would mean so much for you to join us. Find out more!

Welcome to Sara’s Seatbelt Challenge!March 27th will mark 30 years since the world lost Sara Christie Schewe, but her story didn’t end that day. Through Sara’s Wish Foundation, her legacy continues to save and enrich lives through legislation, scholarships, and one very important motto: Sit, C...

03/11/2026

04/17/2020

Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, we are so proud of you!

04/17/2020

2015 Global Humanitarian Award recipient Dr. Nahid Bhadalia, an infectious disease specialist, assumes national prominence during the CORVID-19 pandemic crisis. Nahid is an associate professor at the Boston University School of Medicine, and the medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit at Boston Medical Center.

On February 9, 2020, Nahid published an op-ed for The Atlantic warning about the burden of the emerging COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare systems based on her experiences as a physician on the frontlines of past epidemics. She called for the need for the international community to invest more in healthcare in the most vulnerable countries to maximize the likelihood of containing outbreaks. Even after COVID-19 reached the status of a pandemic, Nahid continues to stress the importance of containment and mitigation strategies for healthcare workers, governments, and citizens, advocating also for the importance of COVID-19 testing in containing the virus.

Nahid is a regular contributor to MSNBC and other news outlets during this pandemic crisis.

08/13/2016

Great news! One of Sara’s Wish Foundation’s Global Humanitarian Award recipients, Maia Freudenberger, has been selected as a Laureate Global Fellow, a fellowship awarded each year to 20 "young founders/CEOs who have pioneered cutting-edge solutions to urgent societal challenges" through the YouthAction Net and International Youth Foundation. Made possible by Laureate International Universities, the fellowship annually recognizes young social entrepreneurs, ages 18-29, who have led substantial impact initiatives in their communities and are poised to grow their ventures to the next level through YouthActionNet's leadership training, advocacy, and networking opportunities.

Maia wrote: “I want to take this opportunity to thank you and the Sara's Wish Foundation, SO much for your incredible support to me, personally, and to Projet Jeune Leader. I will never forget the first grant that I received from you during my first pilot year running Projet Jeune Leader! Without your support, it would have been very very difficult to launch the organization. So, I want to say thank you.”

Maia, all of us at Sara’s Wish Foundation are so proud of you!

01/29/2016

Global Humanitarian Award Recipient Nahid Bhadelia Honored by The Fletcher School at Tufts University!

Bhadelia, who holds three degrees from Tufts, including a MALD from The Fletcher School, has made the study of and the fight against dangerous pathogens her life’s work. This work has propelled her to a job as an infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center and to prominence as director of infection control at Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory.

Now she is adding further to her life’s work: advocating for and supporting the local health care workers who were so instrumental in helping to contain the outbreak last year and will be instrumental in future epidemics.

For this, and for being at the vanguard of the critical international effort to build better responses to disease outbreaks, Bhadelia has been named the winner of the third annual Fletcher Women's Leadership Award.

We are SO PROUD!

01/06/2016

Sara's spirit is alive in the work of Project Jeune Leader in Madagascar!

We recently received an email from Karen Freudenberger, mother of Global Humanitarian Award recipient Maia Freudenberger, after Karen and her husband returned from visitng Maia in Madagascar. Karen wrote:
"We are all so deeply grateful for the support you have provided her project…the results are visible and palpable. It was a rare treat for us to watch her and her amazing team of dynamic, enthusiastic, and thoughtful young Malagasies at work with the youth of Fianarantsoa. I personally got to visit four of the schools/centers where they worked and was amazed by how totally engaged the children were and the seemingly boundless energy brought by their youth leaders. This was all in sharp contrast to the general context in Madagascar, which has become dramatically more distressed and poverty stricken than when we left seven years ago.
I feel sure that what Maia is doing is very much in Sara’s spirit."

11/30/2015

Major steps forward in the development of the retrofit seatbelt have happened this year. As many of you know, we have teamed with the University of Massachusetts College of Engineering to design and commercialize a retrofit seatbelt system so that existing motor coaches without seatbelts can economically upgrade existing bus seats with 3-point seatbelt systems to save lives. The design phase is complete now and our team of engineers is part of a National Science Foundation ICorps program to develop a business model to manufacture and market the new design. This program of rigorous examination of data and relevant issues/dynamics, over 100 interviews, as well as a carefully prescribed, thoughtful review process in order to provide the needed information to successfully get the retrofit into the hands of users. We are very excited about the possibilities emerging from this investigation.

Tell all your friends about the important work of Sara's Wish Foundation. With your help, we will save lives!!!

11/30/2015

A few weeks ago, the head of the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency (NHTSA) spoke strongly encouraging seatbelts in all school buses. Perhaps you saw this reported on NBC, CNN and other national media. His remarks speak to the broad issue of seatbelt safety thus providing timely support for our retrofit initiative for motorcoaches.

Spread the word!!!!

11/14/2015

A celebration! Certificates awarded after the first certification program in Sierra Leone, designed and conducted by SWF Global Humanitarian Award winner Nahid Bhadelia.

11/13/2015

Second New Global Humanitarian Award Granted to Maia Freudenberger!!!

Maia, our second New SWF Global Humanitarian Award recipient, has distinguished herself as a humanitarian and educator in ways that are extraordinary for one so young. A 2013 graduate of Haverford College, Maia received her first scholarship from SWF that year in support of her establishment of a leadership, service, and mentorship program for young adolescents in a school district in Madagascar. That initiative, “Project Jeune Leader,” has become so successful in the past two years that it is expanding to multiple locations in Madagascar and has secured major funding from the Principality of Monaco. However, bridge funding was needed, and Maia received a $6,000 award from SWF. With its high quality design and responsible impact analysis, we are confident that Project Jeune Leader can serve as a model for educating adolescents about health, safety, and personal responsibility across the global community.

11/13/2015

First New SWF Global Humanitarian Award Granted to Nahid Bhadelia!!!

January 18, 2015: Sara’s Wish Foundation is delighted to announce the first recipient of our new award in support of a substantive humanitarian initiative somewhere in the global community. 1999 scholarship recipient Nahid Bhadelia’s proposal was to institute a training program [Infection Control Training for Ebola Survivors – Training the Trainers Curriculum] for up to 80 persons in Sierra Leone on how to appropriately and safely work with Ebola “survivors,” both those who have had the disease and those who have been left orphaned or, in some other way, destitute due to the spread of this infection. The trainings will involve understanding the true nature of Ebola, information on infection transmission and disease control, and critical specifics such as how to put on the personal protective equipment. This training program will create trainers out of those in the workshop and so the web of information and prevention of infection of treatment personnel will expand. We granted Nahid $10,000 for her program, with the funds channeled through the non-profit organization Partners in Health (with which Nahid is affiliated).