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You might not know the name Morten Lindstrom but if you look carefully through a lot of BlackBerry webinars, developer documentation and various other parts of BlackBerry related content, you're sure to find his name. Morten is part of the BlackBerry community, especially the developer community being a BlackBerry Elite member. He gives up a lot of his time to help others but this time around Morten needs some help from #TeamBlackBerry.

Morten lives in Trinidad with his wife Nicole, who was recently diagnosed with sickle cell anemia. As Morten puts it, in the beginning it was all about being able to handle the pain, and good diet combined with pain killers was enough to help Nicole live a happy and positive life. However her situation soon deteriorated and she began having constant pain that not even morphine could stop, her energy level started dropping, and the days went from being active, to a fight for survival, all in less than a year.

While there is treatment available in the United States and Morten has raised a whopping $250,000 from insurance, from his personal funds, bank loans, and his local community, it's not enough. Nicole's symptoms have progressed to a point where her organs have started failing, including her lungs, and she now has heart problems. She's dying. She's simply too weak to travel to the United States and Morten is trying to raise an additional $40,000 to fund a local specialist to build up her body strength, to fund the travel, and to get her to the treatment she needs.

Folks in the community have already raised $4,640 but it's simply not enough and that's where you come in. If you can find it in your heart to donate a few dollars to help Morten and Nicole out, that would be amazing. To encourage donations and raise awareness, Alec Saunders has even written up a blog post for Morten and Nicole, along with issuing a challenge for everyone who does donate:

Personally, I have donated $200. Here's what else I will do: I will donate another $250 when the campaign reaches $10,000, $250 more when the campaign reaches $20,000, $250 more when it reaches $30,000 and $250 more when we achieve the $40,000 target. That's another $1,000 I'll contribute.

I realize this post might have come out of nowhere, but when Alec asked if there was anything we could do to help raise awareness of the situation it seemed rather obvious to do a post about it. I cannot possibly imagine being in Morten's position and I'm sure many of you can't either. If you're looking for more details, I fully encourage you to check out Morten's fundraising page and Alec Saunders blog post. It doesn't even have to be a financial donation. Morten has offered to work, if anyone is a position to do some hiring.

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