He had heard about children in current and former conflict zones who had lost their hands to land mines, so he decided to build a simple prosthetic that would be cheap enough to distribute all over the world, free of cost. He named the hand the LN-4, after his daughter, Ellen.
The LN-4 is designed for below-elbow amputees. It's built for ease, cost and distribution: It attaches with Velcro, requires no surgery, costs only $50 to make and requires far less maintenance than the most common American prosthetic, the hook. It's not quite as pirate-y as a hook, either.
"The LN-4 is not really considered a cosmetic device, but it clearly looks better than a hook," Give a Hand Foundation chairman Michael Mendonca told AOL News.
Odyssey Teams
A recipient poses with his new hand from Give a Hand Foundation and Odyssey Teams, which have distributed just under 7,000 LN-4 prosthetic hands in more than 50 countries.
In the past few years, Give a Hand has joined with Odyssey Teams, a company that runs corporate training programs with a socially responsible bent. For years, Odyssey has been running programs where corporate clients would build bikes for children, but when COO and co-owner Lain Hensley heard about the LN-4, he knew that he would be able to do something with an even broader impact.
The hands are finely tuned products, but they're not so complicated that an untrained person can't assemble them.
When they're done, the hands are given an extensive quality check and then distributed free of cost by the Give a Hand Foundation to prescreened applicants.
According to Hensley, they try to use the hands as a way of reminding their clients of the impact that their work, from making batteries to selling pharmaceuticals, can have on people outside their own companies.
"All businesses need to be thinking that someone outside of the board room needs to benefit from our experiences," he told AOL News. "When we get grounded in the real impact of our work, it puts pressure on us to do our very best in everything that we do."
Meadows, a Rotary Club member, originally donated the plans for the LN-4 to his fellow Rotarians under the condition that no recipient would ever be charged. According to Hensley, one of the biggest challenges they face in distribution can sometimes be just the simple act of convincing people that they're going to get a prosthetic hand for free.
Once they figure out that the program is for real, though, they're ecstatic. One of the first things many recipients do is grab a pen and start writing for hours -- something some of them may not have been able to do for years.
