In 2002 Rotary Club of Poipu Beach donated money and volunteers for the Rotaplast medical mission to Cebu city, Philippines. When we arrived in Cebu we met little John Ray Villamor and 100 other poor children who had facial birth defects. John Ray’s face and mouth were repaired and now he looks, acts and speaks like any other child.
The Cebu Rotarians asked us to return the next year because there were 100 more children who needed help and their parents couldn’t afford the surgery. So we went back. Working in close partnership with the Philippine Rotarians we realized that we were becoming good friends. And we went back a third time and formed a sister club partnership. We began to see a bigger picture. We saw that the hospital we were working in was desperately overcrowded and had no money or equipment.
Dr. Lee Evslin, CEO of Wilcox Hospital on Kauai, formed a sister hospital partnership with the Cebu hospital knowing that Kauai had medical equipment to donate, but needed Rotary’s connections and abilities to ship the equipment. Since then many hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical equipment has been transferred to Cebu saving countless lives.
The partnerships have prospered and many Kauai people and doctors regularly travel to Cebu for medical missions. Dr. Evslin’s vision of a sister hospital partnership supported by Rotary came true and then he saw a higher goal; a modern and fully equipped medical unit for Cebu’s critically ill indigent children. Rotary Club of Poipu Beach with Rotary Club partners from around the district are actively working to bring that vision to reality.
