Students lend a helping hand

Lake Ridge, Va. - In the spirit of the holidays, 15 foreign exchange students from 11 different countries banded together last month under the "Helping Hands" project for a team-building exercise, but they left with an important lesson: to help those in need.

The event was intended to foster teamwork, cooperation, friendship and problem-solving for a group from countries such as Finland, Montenegro, Serbia and Iceland. But it resulted in enlight-ening participants' world views.

In Helping Hands, the exchange students construct prosthetic hands for children who are victims of land mines, disease or amputation. It came to Inova Fairfax Hospital by way of Diana Latvala, regional director of international Experience -- USA, an organization that hosts high school-age foreign exchange students in American families and schools.

"The project itself caught my attention, and I thought it would be a great project for the students to participate in," said Latvala, who organizes monthly events for the group of exchange students. "I thought that this would be a wonderful experience for the exchange students to do something for other kids around the world; my kids here around the world helping other kids around the world."

More than 100 million land mines are still active worldwide, and as a result there are more than 2,000 land mine accidents a month, according to the IE-USA project.

Helping Hands is a product of Odyssey Teams Inc., an organization that started the team-building exercises for the credit union community, and that's how Latvala got wind of the project. The specific prosthetic hand used for the Helping Hands events, the LN-4, is designed for chil-dren because the hand can "grow" with the youngsters with only minor adjust-ments.

Little direction or explanation was given to the participants about what activity they were about to embark on; instead, exchange students, host siblings and host parents were divided into teams of three and sent into action.

Equipped with a brief introduction, a notebook containing instructions and pictures, and a pouch of necessary parts, teams were given 45 minutes to assemble and test the prosthetic hand.

"Some groups chose to use written instructions, some followed the pictures and some just started trying to assemble the prosthetic hand without use of directions at all," explained Latvala, who lives in Triangle. "They soon found out that team members had different ideas on how to proceed. They had not seen the finished product nor did they know the purpose of what they were building or who their customer was."

After time ran out, Frank Hackney, facilitator of the project, asked the participants how they felt about what they had accomplished, and then told them how the hands were going to be used.

"I was very impressed by the way these exchange students from all over the globe em-braced the assembly of hands that ultimately will find their way to recipients around the planet," Hackney said, reflecting on the students' maturity. "With most proc-ess-improvement and team-building programs, the value is in what the participants take away with them. With this program, the value is in what the participants leave behind. In this case, the prosthetic hands and team photos will be delivered somewhere in the world -- generally, South America, southeast Asia or Africa -- for distribution at no cost to the recipients through the support of Rotary International."

Before sending the assembled prosthetics to Rotary International in California, students deco-rated the pouches containing the hands and posed for a photograph with the finished prod-uct.

"The recipient, who gets the hand without any cost to them, has a picture of the people who built the hand for them," Latvala said. "It's a personal touch. It really got them right in the heart. [The students] were quiet and reserved, really proud of what they had done."