Unleashing the power of a smile

by Martin Moodie |
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Martin Moodie

Martin Moodie is the Founder & Chairman of The Moodie Report.

leena and me

Bad news and good news. My trip to Haiti this week for a visit to the Hand in Hand for Haiti school, Lycée Jean-Baptiste Pointe du Sable, has been postponed at the last minute due to some unrest in the Caribbean nation.

I’m disappointed as it would have been my first chance to see the school since it opened in October 2011, and my first visit to Haiti since that initial scouting mission way back in March 2010, just after the January earthquake. I was due in Haiti not just to see the school but for a very important reason that I will tell you about during the week.

The good news is that I’ve got a week to recover from a nasty chest infection that has laid me low on my recent travels before I hit the flightpaths again at the weekend. Road warrior? I feel like road kill. Sometimes you have to listen to your body and I don’t need a stethoscope to hear what mine’s saying.

Feeling grumpy and weak, I flew out of Dubai a couple of days back in the wee small hours of the morning and was cheered up immediately when I saw my friend and colleague Colleen Morgan’s new book Throw me a Smile prominently displayed at Dubai Duty Free.

As mentioned, the book relates the tough but ultimately triumphant battle of Colleen’s daughter Lucy (and her family) against a rare form of cancer that struck when she was seven (she’s now 20 and a healthy young woman).

leena display

You can buy it at Dubai Duty Free or on Amazon. A percentage of proceeds is being donated to Elpida, the Association of Friends of Children with Cancer (www.elpida.org)

I’m grateful to Dubai Duty Free for supporting Colleen so I duly bought a copy. I was served by Leena, a delightful sales assistant from Mumbai. Impressively, Leena knew all about the book that was on display. “It’s a very good book; very sad but very inspirational Sir,” she told me. In short, she’d bothered to find out about what she was selling.

As you can see, Leena has a smile that could light up not only Mumbai but the whole of the United Arab Emirates, nicely appropriate given the title of what she was selling me. Yet another human example of how well Dubai Duty Free trains its people. Yet another example of the power of a smile.

leena 1