Two birds, one stone - Here's my report for North Fresno Rotary's Bulletin.

Is Rotary a Great Organization or What?

So, here’s this guy— Michael Mendonca—and he’s the Vice President of Stack Plastics, Inc.

Stack manufactures plastic widgets – really, really small gears, for example — for other people’s gadgets. It’s a good business, but nothing to get very excited about.

It certainly isn’t going to change the world, but maybe Mike didn’t go into the plastic business to change the world.

But he’s in Rotary, you see, and because he’s in Rotary, he meets the Meadows family who do want to change the world, one small bit, because they want to honor the memory of their daughter, Ellen, who died tragically young in an automobile accident. The Meadows have designed a cheap prosthetic and they want to get the prosthetic hands from the “chalk board” out into the real world where people have been maimed by mines and accidents. The Meadows have a problem, which is, how are they going to turn their design into reality?

The answer is, “plastics.”

Mike, who was the President of his Rotary Club in Menlo Park, is asked to see what he can do. For Mike, and Stack Plastics, the problem is elementary. Stack designs the the molds and turns out the prototypes for the hands.

Before Mike knows it, he’s off to Vietnam to see if the hands really will work.

There are some design problems. Mike and Stack redesign the hands. The problems are fixed. People donate time and money. Mike visits war-torn East Africa where local charities pitch in their time and resources. The hands are fitted to people who for the first time in years experience the freedom that they were denied when they were hideously maimed.

Mike changes the world.

No one at last Thursday’s meeting could have missed the enthusiasm that this “Plastics guy” communicated as he described his involvement in a project that could change the lives of 100,000 maimed victims of war and land mines. More importantly, no one could miss Mike’s unstated amazement that he - of all people—was involved in changing the world.

I know I was surprised when Mike explained that a “mere” $14 million solves the problem. That number could well be the “rounding error” on any one of the pork barrel projects that Congress appropriates every year. Why not have Congress pull out the petty change from an undesignated slush fund and then we can move on to the next project?

Here is the answer:

Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbour is indispensable.. The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern.

Deus Est Caritas (2006)

Rotary, Mike, you, me, we are all part of the “loving personal concern” which is the “indispensable concrete love of neighbor”, without which human existence is sterile. “Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such.” Moreover, as Mike’s talk showed, we become more excellent when we amaze ourselves by the capacity to express the “concrete love of neighbor”, which we do every time we participate in Rotary.

How cool is that?

Footnotes: Here is the Website for Stack Plastics.

Stack really has donated its expertise, time and resources to carrying out this project of manufacturing and distributing cheap, durable and workable prosthetic hands to victims of war in Third World countries. Stack is also setting up a "100 Year Business Plan" because many victims are children who will need maintence and parts for their hands for years.

Stack isn't the only "corporation" involved in this kind of unheralded, quiet philanthropy. For example, check out the Wheelchair Foundation" that my club has also been heavily involved in.

And you probably have never heard of any of this.

Because you don't belong to Rotary. Every year, the members of Rotary fight polio, or distribute wheelchairs, or provide children with prosthetic hands, or etc., etc., etc. Most of this is never publicized, but something to think about the next time some "progressive" calls you heartless because you want lower taxes and a smaller government is whether you have done your part in demonstrating the “concrete love of neighbor”.

If you think you haven't, think about Rotary.