Dignity Health | hello Healthy| Winter 2018

HelloHealthy | Winter 2018 3 For the past 30 years, Bakersfield Cardiologist Peter Nalos, MD, has cared for hearts here in Kern County. Now he’s expanding his mission field to include children half a world away. Over the past five years, Dr. Nalos has helped build 36 schools in Africa, funding most with his own money. About a year ago, he co- founded the nonprofit organization African Children’s Schools in an effort to break the cycle of illiteracy for kids in rural African countries. Opening his heart For Dr. Nalos, this journey began many years earlier while traveling deep in the jungles of Zimbabwe. The doctor was so impressed by the African people’s willingness to help him on his expedition that they quickly won his heart. “They were all helping me on this adventure, and I just fell in love with the people and the kids,” Dr. Nalos says. “So I was willing to go anywhere.” And that he did. After years of visiting Africa on safaris, Dr. Nalos says he had a feeling it was time to start on a new, divinely inspired expedition. “I just felt like it was God’s voice telling me, ‘If you want to see my face, you’re seeing it in the face of African children,’” Dr. Nalos says. “And it was like, it’s time to start doing something meaningful.” ‘No child too far’ Since then, Dr. Nalos has personally spent more than $250,000 to build schools for children in rural Ethiopia, Zambia and South Africa. His nonprofit has adopted the motto “No child too far” and works tirelessly to educate children who have essentially no access to schools. “Oftentimes, African children gather under a tree with a blackboard,” says Dr. Nalos. “There is no school building, there are no desks or chairs, just bugs and goats running around and a teacher who’s doing her very best under a tree.” The work of African Children’s Schools does not end with the completion of a brick-and-mortar building. The scope of its mission is wide-ranging and includes building bathrooms; supplying desks, blackboards, and educational materials; and paying the salaries of 70 teachers. Heart doctor spreads the love Dr. Nalos says that going forward, he’d like to go back to serve the communities where schools have already been built, focusing his efforts on training teachers and standardizing curriculum. He’d also like to establish medical clinics specifically to care for his students.