CHICAGO, ILL.

If you were ever looking for living proof that business people can make a difference in the world, the place to be was the recent centennial conference of Rotary International.

This was a particularly significant year as more than 40,000 Rotarians invaded Chicago to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Rotary. They met close to where it all began in 1905, when businessman Paul Harris and his friends started having weekly rotating meetings. Now the organization spans 167 countries and has 1.2 million members.

While there was a lot of speechifying, flag waving, banner trading, and yes, even some raucous partying at the conference, what impressed me most were the rows of booths devoted to successful Rotary humanitarian projects, many of them based on leading-edge science and technology.

Tom Keenan, Business Edge
Charles Hanson of the Rotary Club's La Crosse, Wis., branch is the proud founding organizer of The Brain Game project, a book that helps parents understand early brain development.

Consider the Rotary Club of La Crosse, Wis. Club member and local attorney Charles Hanson had a problem. He needed a speaker for a coming meeting, so he called on Nan Brien of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families.

She gave a talk about the importance of the first three years of a child's life for brain development. Brien reported that stimulation in pre-school years is a significant indicator of future student success.

Hanson says her talk inspired the club's members who "recognized a clear need in our community for more information on the importance of early brain development."

But there was another problem. Search as they might, they couldn't find a good, readable resource to distribute to new and expectant parents. According to Hanson, "most current medical research on this subject is very technical and difficult for the average new parent to understand."

So, spearheaded by his Rotary club, a consortium of schools, churches, businesses and the University of Wisconsin created The Brain Game - Infant and Early Childhood Brain Development. It's an attractive, colourful 84-page book, cleverly designed, says Hanson, to "just fit into a diaper bag."

The spiral-bound book uses songs, games and objects you find around the house so, as Hanson says, "you don't have to go out and spend hundreds of dollars at Toys 'R' Us."

The project organizers have now distributed thousands of copies of the book and had it translated into Spanish. They make it available to Rotary clubs around the world for a modest fee. It winds up in daycare centres, medical-waiting rooms and in the hands of new parents.

In answer to the question, "Is this good science?" child development consultant Brien notes there was some doubt around a decade ago, "But now the medical community has reached consensus about the importance of touch and stimulation in a baby's development."

She adds that it's even been shown that brain cells physically migrate from the brain stem to the cortex in the first months of life, and that appropriate stimulation helps the process along.

Another remarkable project represented at the convention was started by Dr. Angelo Capozzi, chief of plastic surgery at the Shriners Hospital for Children in northern California. Capozzi also serves as medical director of Rotaplast International, a group that sends teams of surgeons and support people around the world to repair cleft palates.

Founded in 1992 by the Rotary Club of San Francisco, this group has the ambitious goal of eliminating the incidence of untreated cleft lips and palates in children worldwide by the year 2025. San Francisco lawyer Peter Lagarias and his fellow Rotarians pioneered the concept, sending a mission to La Serena, Chile, in 1993. Since then, more than 7,000 people, mostly children, have had the surgery. There's even a Kelowna, B.C.-based Rotaplast Canada Foundation, which organized a mission to Batangas, Philippines, in 2004.

"It's tremendously important to do this operation for them at a young age," says Lagarias, who with Capozzi manned the project's booth at the Rotary Convention. "It helps to develop normal speech and avoids many future dental problems."

Cleft-palate victims are also prone to respiratory infections and hearing loss, and - in many cultures - become outcasts.

Of course, reconstructive surgery is available to most U.S. and Canadian children, but not in the developing world. The team typically spends two weeks in an area at a local hospital, and Capozzi says they bring in sophisticated supplies, even their own anesthesia gases.

A Rotary club, or group of clubs, raises about $40,000 US to sponsor a mission, and the surgeons and others involved volunteer their time. Anyone can make a donation and as little as $25 US can provide two sterile surgical kits.

One of the most amazing Rotary success stories happened in Canada, with the 2003 launch of Rotary Challenger Park (RCP), a unique barrier-free sports and conference facility that allows persons with disabilities to play next to their able-bodied peers. Situated on 23 acres of land near the Calgary International Airport, this $13.9-million project harnessed the efforts of many Rotary clubs as well as organizations representing more than 100,000 people in the community.

Calgary Rotarian Duane Schmeeckle manned the RCP booth at the conference in Chicago and fielded a steady stream of questions about this remarkable project. With more than 150 countries represented at the conference, chances are we'll be seeing similar projects springing up in places from Mississauga, Ont., to Malawi.

As Rotary president Glenn Estess said in the opening ceremonies, "it is no surprise that Rotarians from all over the world overcome political, religious and ethnic differences every day to pursue a common goal of humanitarianism."

Rotary founder Paul Harris would have been amazed, and mighty proud, about what's happened to his idea in Rotary's first century.

Web Watch: www.rotaplastcanada.org www.challengerpark.com (Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)