While hiking in Israel with two American friends in 1984, Jerry White suddenly collapsed to the ground, screaming, “My leg, my leg!” Little did this 20-year-old from Cohasset, Massachusetts, realize, he had stepped on a landmine. What began as a warm and sunny day at the edge of the Golan Heights became a life-threatening nightmare.

As White lay on the ground, losing blood rapidly and in frightful pain, his friends yelled to him to not move. White’s right foot was blown apart and bones were protruding from his left leg. The three young men had had no warning that they were entering a minefield with explosives waiting to cause damage.

Painstakingly, they managed to lift him up and transport him to the nearest hospital. After undergoing surgery, developing gangrene, then going through three more surgeries, followed by rehabilitation at a hospital, he finally returned home.

Queen Noor of Jordan, seen here on a trip to Asia, is among the many notable supporters of Landmine Survivors Network.

“Israel is the leading trauma-recovery center in the world, with state-of-the-art equipment and medicine,” says White, now co-founder and executive director of Landmine Survivors Network (LSN). “During my recovery and rehabilitation, it was difficult to see where I would fit in the world I had known,” he said.

White recalls a landmine survivor who visited him in the hospital offering advice: “You have a choice: stay a victim or be a survivor,” he said, as he pointed to his own leg. “Your problem is not down there, but up here (pointing to his head) and in here (pointing to his heart).”

White realized at that moment that life isn’t over after losing a leg, and with his newly gained inspiration, White chose to survive.

In 1995, White worked on a landmine ban movement. In 1997, with co-founder Ken Rutherford, he launched the Landmine Survivors Network (LSN) as a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering landmine victims to reclaim their lives through programs in health, economic opportunities and human rights.

“Ken Rutherford, another American survivor and double-amputee, and I started LSN because, frankly, the world was ignoring the plight of mine victims. Most were dying, and fewer than 10 percent had access to rehabilitation and medical care,” says White.

Landmine Survivors Network now operates peer-support groups in seven heavily-mined countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Columbia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Jordan, Mozambique and Vietnam. Their goal is to work with other partners to remove all mines in Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Angola and Iraq.