Two Tanzanian boys with a rare form of skin cancer flew to the states for medical care and a week at camp this summer, thanks to the Meelia Center for Community Service and Emerald Russell ’07.

The Meelia Center raised more than $7,000 to bring the boys, ages 9 and 11, for a visit that included stops in New York, Washington D.C. and Maine. Russell met the children last fall, when she took a semester off to volunteer at their school in Tanzania.

Ally Amiri and Emanuel Tenga visited the National Institutes of Health’s Cancer Research Lab, where a battery of medical experts evaluated their condition, removed a potentially deadly tumor from Ally’s lip, and, in the process, learned more about Xeroderma Pigmentosum (XP). Russell also drove the children to a Craryville, NY, camp for children with XP. Sufferers of the disease should avoid sunlight, so Camp Sundown holds its activities at night and allows campers to sleep during the day.

Russell also brought the boys to visit her native Maine “to do the whole laid-back Maine thing,” she said.

Although from Maine, there is nothing laid-back about Russell. The psychology major and former Hawks basketball player volunteered at the Mwereni School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, in Moshi, Tanzania, after deciding as a freshman she wanted to do more than spend her time studying or in the gym.

Upon her return, she contacted the Tennessee School for the Blind and secured donations of books in large print and Braille. In all, she has mailed more than 100 boxes of books to the school. In addition, she approached the Meelia Center for help with fund raising. The center staged a Wiffle ball tournament and other efforts that raised enough money to not only pay the boys’ passage to the United States, but also to buy a refrigerator and other badly needed items for the school.

Dan Forbes, Meelia Center director, said fundraising will continue for the school, which has no electricity, plumbing or shady areas to protect children from the equatorial sun. He also hopes to find an organization to develop a long-term partnership with the school.

“I want to say to people, look at what you can do at Saint Anselm College,” Russell said. “I am so thankful to Dan Forbes and Nickie Lora [Meelia Center assistant director] and all the other great people around school who helped make this happen…I just wish you all could hear their laughs and screeches coming down a slide for the first time or riding on a swing or a teeter totter.”