Kiwanis Changing the World

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Changing the World

One Person At a Time

Kiwanis offers its members a rare opportunity for Self-Actualization. When accomplished, Self-Actualization makes us truly human. When accomplished, Self-Actualization takes us outside of ourselves and allows us, among other things, to know that the world is a better place because of our efforts.

(Self-Actualization is the highest human need in the Hierarchy of Human Needs as conceived by the Brooklyn-born visionary psychologist, Abraham Maslow. According to Maslow, Self-Actualization can be achieved only by people who have already attained the four lower-ranking human needs: Survival, Safety, Belonging and Self-Esteem.)

We are Self-Actualized when we mentor children on the way to lives as happy, productive and successful adults. We are Self-Actualized when we protect infants from Shaken Baby Syndrome. We are Self-Actualized when we provide life-changing iodine to protect developing embryos against a future as mentally and physically impaired babies. When we are Self-Actualized, the future of the world is in some way permanently improved . . . and, in a very real sense, the benefit of our good works live on long after we are gone.

In summary, we are Self-Actualized when we make permanent changes for good in peoples’ lives. Consider, for example, the change in the lives of family members when the family’s primary wage earner or care-giver is returned to productive life from what would otherwise be a lifetime as a permanent invalid.

Severe trauma that will never heal without modern surgical intervention, very rare in the US and Canada, is distressingly common in developing countries where pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes, cars, trucks, buses and domestic animals all share the same roads.

Although it costs insurance plans, Medicare, and/or the victims a lot of money in the US and Canada, their severely traumatized citizens are routinely restored to productive lives thanks to modern-day surgical intervention. Now, thanks to Kiwanis/SIGN, severe trauma, which is much more common in developing countries than in the US and Canada, is also being healed through the humanitarian efforts of PNW Kiwanians teamed with 1997 Kiwanis World Service Medal Laureate, Dr. Lewis G. Zirkle, Jr., MD. Through Kiwanis/SIGN, a healing orthopedic surgery that costs tens of thousands of dollars in the US and Canada for surgical intervention, costs Kiwanians and/or their clubs only $100 in developing countries.

Because even $100 is out of reach for most people in developing countries, Kiwanians, SIGN, and other humanitarians are assuring that the life-changing medical technology is available to those who need it at no cost at all to the victims.