Ellen Meadows Prosthetic Hand Foundation partnered with East Meets West to bring donated prosthetic hands to people in Vietnam through EMW's Support Network for People with Disabilities program.

Below is a letter from Michael Mendonca, President of the The Ellen Meadows Prosthetic Hand Foundation (EMPHF) and Partner of Stack Plastics, who manufactured and donated the prosthetic hands about EMPHF.

 

"Our Opportunity To Give Back"

I am the VP of Stack Plastics, a plastics injection molding company in the Silicon Valley in California.  Some time ago, Stack did the Research & Development for Oral B on their tooth brush which has the rubber bumpy pads to help you hold it better. Upon seeing this in his own tooth brush, Ernie Meadows went to Oral B who directed him to us here at Stack Plastics to make the prosthetic hand that he invented in memory of his daughter, Ellen, who was killed in an automobile accident some years ago.

Ernie's intent was to manufacture a child's prosthetic hand that could be given away in countries where landmine victims resided.  He wanted to distribute the hands for no charge and upon showing the hand to Mark and me (Mark is the President and founder of Stack Plastics and he and I have been best friends since 4th grade), Mark and I decided that this was also OUR opportunity to give back. We made a business decision that we could and would manufacture the hands for no profit and that we would lead the charge of this effort.

Ernie and I showed the hands to my Rotary Club (The Rotary Club of Pleasant Hill, CA) who came up with the first $5,000 toward the making of the hands. Similarly, I also showed the hands to the youth group at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church who raised about $2,200 during a fasting event - these two amounts enabled us to make the first 2 dozen prototypes and then my wife (Janet) and I went to Vietnam with Kids First to put on the initial hands and to learn from the process. Wow, we learned so much from this trip and then came back home and made so many changes.

Upon presenting our findings and key learnings to a Rotary District conference in southern Oregon, Tim Bewley (who was also on our Vietnam trip, but not part of the hand project at the time although became a hard core supporter of the hand project while filming it)and I got the entire southern Oregon District (District 5110) and my District (Northern California - District 5160) literally "jazzed" about this project as we then put a team of 8 people together to go to Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to put on more of the new and improved hands and processes.  We put on about 75 hands on that trip and then followed up with nearly 2/3 of the people 6 mos. later and learned that virtually 100% of the recipients were using the hands on a daily basis - we then knew that we had a good product.

This was all within the last 2 years!  To date, we have put over 200 hands on in 7 countries but again - we are just getting "warmed up." We have formed a 501c3 non-profit foundation, The Ellen Meadows Prosthetic Hand Foundation (I am President) and have received tens of thousands of dollars in donations already in order to make production level molds which are still a few months out.  We have identified at least 23 nations and estimate 100,000 people who could benefit from these hands.  We have also made a prototype of an adult sized hand and another piece called the "arm extension" which allows us to add 1", 2" or 3" in length depending on where the amputation is located.  The recipients must have at least 4" below the elbow in order for our "Product" to work.  The recipients pay nothing and the cost in the U.S. to provide one of these hands is just $50.00...not a typo here...$50.00.

We are writing a 100 year business plan and anticipate manufacturing on 4 continents before all is said and done but it will likely take us about 10 years to get to that point.  We know that the only way this will work is if we factor ourselves OUT of the process - we know that a 3 year old child today will need to replace the hand at some regular intervals - we don't know if it is 3 years or 5 years, but we know it will need to be replaced. What will happen when that child is 50 years old?  Who will do it?  What happens if Stack Plastics is no longer around?  We have entered into a realm of responsibility that only works if we pull ourselves out of the equation - and besides, the project is much bigger than any one of us anyway."

- Written by Michael Mendonca, President of the Ellen Meadows Prosthetic Hand Foundation