Ansestors to parents communication in react

I want to create a component with only one event and place it inside an ancestor of any given level (child or grandchild or deeper), and when the event triggers the parent of this ancestor will act (eg. alert("I am "+parent.name+" and one of my ansestors did something")). Imagin of an old peoples home whos residents refuse to die and have a million ansestors, and the residents inform eachother everytime one of their ansestors has a birthday. What would be the most elgant way to do this since i understand that the observer pattern is fround upon in react? and could it be done without passing the parent object manually when creating a child?