partner office, engaging lawyers, law enforcement, and social justice advocates in the cause against human trafficking. For the next 12 years, McIntosh passionately led the resourcing of Canadian projects around justice and anti-trafficking in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. When World Vision Canada approached McIntosh to take over their international programs to integrate advocacy and justice for children with their humanitarian relief efforts, it was an opportunity to learn from their team and to operate at scale. He became Vice President of Programs & Policy for the organization, working with churches and government officials to raise hundreds of millions of dollars and run programs to help people suffering on the brink of famine and in the midst of disease and disaster. His next move was predicated by something much closer to home.
Emerging convictions
During the summer of 2018, the McIntosh family had a series of “near misses and health scares” that involved his own kids. “In a hospital setting where one of my children was in a coma, I was looking around the room and seeing highly trained health care professionals and millions of dollars of equipment working to save my boy’s life,” McIntosh recalled. “I realized we have the blessing and privilege of being able to access that level of care, but I’ve been around the world and most children don’t have that. There was this emerging conviction that every child should have access to life-saving intervention and care. I wanted to be part of that.” McIntosh noted that the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery (lancetglobalsurgery.org) found 28 to 32 percent of the global burden of disease can be attributed to surgically treatable conditions. “There are more people who die each year from lack of access to surgery than malaria, TB, and HIV combined,” he said. “And 6.9 million lives are lost to surgically treatable conditions.” Already recognizing the great need, McIntosh was willing to listen when Mercy Ships approached him to take on leadership in Canada. He sensed God had been preparing
McIntosh’s career in humanitarian leadership has been a blessing to him and his family and has had an impact on thousands of people through the organizations he has served. The foundation of compassion he learned as a child has been a constant theme, but it’s the process of seeing Christ’s love for all that motivates him in all he does.
Strength and dignity
“It is a privilege to have been invited into the beautiful brokenness of our world and of people’s lives,” McIntosh said. “I’ve been blown away by the strength and dignity of mothers in Somalia fighting for their children to survive; of giving birth in difficult conditions. Traveling at the excluded margins of humanity, the pages of Scripture come to life— the plight of the refugee, experienced by Christ himself when his parents fled Herod’s violence into Egypt, or being raised under Roman occupation in the Middle East. I’ve traveled to places where there’s war torn strife, conflict, abuse, and yet there is this—I think Helen Keller said it well—‘the world is full of suffering, but it’s also full of the overcoming of suffering.’ “We are all in desperate need of the touch of the Savior. When you see God showing up in the most desolate places in the faces of people who’ve been oppressed, yet still sparkle with a smile, with a hope, with an ingenious idea that helps get water or crops to their community … it gives you deep gratitude for all you have received, but a deep sense of responsibility for not only sharing that but to be willing to become broken bread and poured out wine.” Jamie McIntosh has followed his calling to show mercy and compassion in many settings, living out on a large scale the echo of the words once spoken to his mother, “Jesus just told us to love you.” Submitted
Photos: Mercy Ships
Medical teams provide healing and restoration to thousands each year through surgical procedures aboard Mercy Ships vessels.
the way to make the move. He is now CEO of Mercy Ships Canada (mercyships.ca), enthusiastically committed to the organization’s mission to model Jesus Christ’s example to bring hope and healing to those who suffer from lack of access to affordable surgery and health care around the coast of Africa.
Jamie McIntosh ’97, CEO of Mercy Ships Canada
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