Admiring Ingenuity

As you can see from some of my last posts, I really admire ingenuity. People that can make the world a better place, esp. for the poor, are some of the best resources this planet has. I like the Dean Kamen attitude that if we aren't making the world a better place for someone else, why are we here? (In this there is an implied answer but I think it goes deeper.)

When the political world seems full of gloom and doom, when no amount of talk-show wisdom can turn around power structures bent on illogic, my mind finds solace in stories like this one:

"Brilliant water-based eyeglasses for the masses: No optician required" Josh Silver invented glasses that a person can pump up until the world looks right then seal. His target is people in countries generally not rich enough to afford glasses whose lives and livelihoods are diminished because they can't see. Three cheers for Josh Silver!!!

There is still plenty of problem solving to do. How does he produce and distribute them at low cost?

1. Some of my nephews have focused their Eagle Scout projects on collecting used frames to give to an optometrist. He takes them to third world countries and fits them to the people there. What if the boy scouts put their hearts and hands to helping Mr. Silver?

2. Get sponsors. The Lyon's Club helps children in the U.S. with eye tests. Is there a global Lyon's Club?

3. Get churches to help.

4. Give the challenge of production to engineering students at universities. Make it a competition.

5. Give the challenge of distribution to business students at universities.

6. A Reversal: Instead of people in wealthy countries making them, teach people without jobs, in the countries where they will be used, to make them. This lessens the distribution problem and solves unemployment for a few.

7. Send them out with humanitarian groups that teach people to read and write.

8. Make it part of the PEF package the LDS church offers.

9. Show some celebrities that it is a good cause to take up.

10. Make them part of a care package we send illegal aliens home with.

11. I heard of a shoe company that said for every pair of shoes they sold in the U.S. they would give a pair of shoes to someone in developing countries. Get frame companies to do the same.

12. I found this story by clicking on the "Stumbled Upon" website. Did it ever make the nightly news? What if networks picked it up as part of a public service campaign?

13. At the Mountain Home Auto Ranch they are running ad campaign called Bucks and Trucks. Buy a truck and get a free gun for the deer hunt. What if books stores offered the chance to sponsor a pair of glasses with every book you bought?

14. I heard last night on the radio of the millions the New York mayor spent on getting re-elected. I wonder if he could get re-elected if he promised to spend that private money on this cause if they would vote him back into office. Let him get his other messages out on free blogs.

15. Make manufacturing these glasses a talking point in the next congressional elections.

16. Brigham Young encouraged his people to use "Beans not Bullets" when dealing with the Native Americans in early Utah. Mao had the troops following him help the farmers with their harvest while the other war lords trampled crops as they crossed the land. Our military could take these glasses to our battlefields to engender good will. You might say we were "walking softly and carrying a big pair of eye glasses." :)

17. The first President Bush saw volunteers as "A Thousand Points of Light." President Obama could encourage Americans to help others "See a Thousand Points of Light."

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