By Violet Li
Cranbourne Rotary Club is organising a Helping Hands Program on 11 May at Balla Balla Community Centre in Clyde North and inviting the local community to engage with the cause that empowers people in need of help worldwide.
Participants will build prosthetic hands that are donated to amputee landmine victims throughout developing countries.
Helping Hands Program is a social enterprise in Australia with a goal to maximise its impact on the world by getting involved in and funding life-changing charity projects.
Victorian facilitator for the Helping Hands Program Andrew Melas said the hands were purely mechanical, which didn’t require batteries or servicing.
“They’re very reliable and robust hands,” he said.
“The cost of the hands, which includes all manufacture and delivery around the world, comes to about $700 in total.
“It’s quite a low-cost solution to providing prosthetic hands.”
Mr Melas said the Helping Hands Program had been running in Australia for about 10 years and it had made about 24,000 hands that went to India, Uganda, Sudan, and other countries around the world.
“We just basically work with groups like Rotary, but we do a lot of corporate charity events as well where we’ll do a workshop for a half day,” he said.
“We build the hands with the participation of the people in the workshops.
“The Rotary Group in Cranbourne is actually raising money to buy as many hands as possible. They’re hoping to raise money to buy about 15 to 20 hands, and we’ll do a workshop on a Saturday with a lot of students from the local schools to build them and send them overseas.
“After we make the hands, we’re happy to ship the hands to those areas wherever Rotary groups have volunteers on the ground. They will contact us and say they’ll need 20 hands in an area.”
If you would like to participate in the Helping Hands Program, you can contact Paul Rice at paul@ultrasigns.com.au
