Gerson put his career in medicine on hold to pursue training in International Relations and Diplomacy earning his degree from Unitec in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and interning at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.
The re-birth of Mision Renuevo as Mission Renewal International (MRI) began in June of 2009 when MRI’s founder Gerson Ruiz was a medical student working on a medical brigade in the mountains of Central America. At the end of the brigade a woman came asking for a coffin for a little girl named Karen that had just died. They asked why she hadn’t been brought to the brigade to which the woman replied that the girl had died of hunger. Gerson and the other medical personnel pulled together the resources to buy timber and they built a coffin. The location was so remote that Gerson needed to carry the coffin up the mountain on his shoulders; he and one of the nurses had the opportunity to meet the family who were so grateful for the assistance (See picture below of Gerson, his wife, and Karen's family). Upon his decent, Gerson saw on the news that the president of that country was making a speech and seeking re-election. This troubled him having just seen what was happening to the citizens of that country—that one of their daughters had just died of hunger. This situation became a defining moment for him pressing Gerson to consider ways that he could make a larger world impact beyond the scope of the medical field and influence the lives of those stuck in the throes of poverty.
He and his wife moved to the United States in fall 2017 and incorporated MRI as a Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation in the state of California in August 2018.
Gerson and his wife Amy have spent collectively over forty years working in healthcare and education and with street children, families, and individuals living in poverty and distress, therefore, witnessing firsthand the needs in Central America, the Caribbean, Africa and parts of Melanesia.
