would like to introduce you  well i think you basically have said of this in an eric it's you have to have a passion like you have a passion for the society you have a passion for what you do and i have a passion for what i do we work for we we re for people who need us and we're not going to get rich but i think we have a very fulfilled life because i don't have a moment and these two projects that you're going to mention we are making a lot of people happy it only took a little from the time we sit down and put together the grand seahawks project which is coming up in november the twenty third the next saturday after next we have been good at partly with new things and reaching out to the community they are sponsoring and host in the film the film that the young people made history and a documentary is sort of i got a little mixture of them both but it's and i've seen footage of some the project i think it was a wonderful project for them to work in these are young people we're still talking about what on a high school middle school kids they have are getting skills that are going to be very valuable want to know like they're going to go to college they have something that they can they can really show this is what i have done and not all young people are at risk of just being in bed they just need people like you to  encourage this and could come and take a look at some of the things that they have done and look at some of the footage in both the projects lake and he said and we partner with the seattle public library it's a double feature and there's go be some other surprises i think that you'll want to fran's just worth your while to come saturday november twenty third at one o'clock to four clark and bring your kids in they're going to be little little things that we're still working on  other organizations that need plumbers and related trades in their work around the world wherever they need water and sanitation so we're building a global database of volunteer plumbers and related trades people to sign up and we will do their you know find out what they would like to do and what their skills are  qualifications and then when we have a need from an organization that needs their skills we will help to facilitate them connecting with each other  spoke spoke to thirty two and they referred him to two plumbers without borders and that's how we learned about black lion hospital and the whole situation here because i don't think either any of us were aware of it before that borders and then around that we started right after the earthquake in haiti in twenty ten is when it was just an idea and so basically since then all last year we worked in the community helping other organizations that had projects involving rehabbing homes and helping people who were unable to get certain plumbing and sanitary things done so we held a few organizations locally here about how many  planet well it's kind of a hard number to actually pin down because we have a lot of climbers around the world that have contacted us that that indicate that they're ready to help innocent  until we have our database fully functioning where we can match the organization that has the need with the plumber that has the time so right now we probably have maybe a hundred plumbers are in our current database but we could easily ramp that up to a couple thousand once our database is fully functional because we have to have the database in order for the information to be employed and we have to get some more pieces of this effort in in place is a retired plumbing inspector as well and and they're they're both retired from the trade but they still hold their licenses and they've had both of them over forty years of plumbing experience the other hospital where the dialysis facility needs to be built so we're involved in trying to get that facility built basically and it won't be the type of like building it from scratch with concrete and and wood and that sort of thing we're trying to come up with that is something that will answer and more immediate call and so they're utilizing all of their connections in the industry and contacting everyone who would have anything to do with dialysis equipment and to all the various components that would be needed so they'll be they have a local community authority that's working on actually you know coordinating that effort so our group will basically be there in capacity and be the dialysis facility i think will be the more near term solution that we hope to be able to brain maybe by next year sometime because this trip will be in november and then they will have to come back and put everything together and gather everything that's needed  expertise you know shipping things that everything that's involved so it'll probably be hopefully early next year and there's a group in ethiopia that's a nonprofit group that is actually coordinating that dialysis out for so they'll be working with them  well i'm a retired plumbing inspector and have over forty five years in the plumbing industry i've been done i guess just about everything you can do in plumbing as far as  installation and designing and managing projects small to big big projects and i'm currently part of plumbers without borders we a group we committed cohen his wife and myself and my wife founded a few years ago to help people around the world with plumbing problems that we can help and do things about what about you d i'm a retired sales manager in the plumbing and heating field and some i retired and i'm was as fred said one of the founding members of plumbers it up borders on our thought was that we would create a database for goals the short term is to get to ethiopia with this group and assess the ability of creating a dialysis center with the equipment for them and build it here and send it there in a forty foot container so that's what we're trying to do there and that's what fred and i are going to be involved in i am going to be going to bed this november yes we are excited yes quite a bit very much so directors and i guess just a little bit about why i decided to get involved with this i decided i wanted to do some kind of medical outreach is basically to try to make the world a better place and i think i was left with a couple of decisions do i want to work somewhere in my own community to try to make that better or do i want to go somewhere else and in my own personal decisions i decided i wanted to go somewhere where i thought i could make the greatest difference and you know there's there's plenty of resources here in the united states and i was looking for some place where i thought with my effort i could implement the greatest amount of change so i got involved with seattle and cesar outrage  because in ethiopia particular there's medical resources in place and there's plenty of very dedicated smart people working there but they're extremely overworked and there's just not enough medical quitman there's not enough training there's not enough money to go around so we figured any difference we could make there would last would persist beyond our being there if we can train people to train other people there so you build an infrastructure which could last past what we do if we could bring medical equipment that they would use and repair long after we were gone in the limited amount of time we would be there would would make a huge difference so that sort of one of the main ideas behind essay zero that i think a lot of other charity organizations don't do it's really not about us it's about trying to make the people who are truly dedicated the people who live there and work there and do their jobs better and take care of people there so we we partner with boeing airlines because they've been a great partner they've helped to ship tons of medical equipment to the blackline hospital and we've worked with particular swedish hospital medical center which is donated probably the lion's share of our  medical equipment easily and we've brought physicians nurses engineers and medical equipment to try to train people there how to how to make their community better and this is  it's been a very rewarding partnership we've made lots of great friends and every time we go back we make new friends we get a little more imbedded in the politics in all of the th mission so that we can buy more equipment and be able to ship it to the black lion so they can use it in their training programs and in taking care of of their patients and i would say that if people are interested in getting involved in an outreach whatever the outreach may be whether it's in ethiopia or anywhere anything you can do is a whole lot better than nothing and i think that if you if you can use your education or get an education knowing that one day you can help people to make things better themselves in whatever place that may be that is the best use of your time and resources you know my experience in ethiopia i love ethiopia i haven't been much outside of this when i go there i'm very busy i get up with sunrise and go to the hospital  work work work and oftentimes i'm not going home until it's dark but the ethiopian people are warm and friendly and spectacular and when i walk home at night in the dark alone i feel very safe on the streets it's a different kind of city than a lot of american cities thank you i would like to start by thanking everyone for taking the time to be here with us today i know we all have so many commitments and obligations that we need to meet so for you guys to take the time away from your family your war your social life to be here with us  experts and if you have any questions since they're right here we'll be able to ask them and just think tonight we're here to give our support to make sure that the work that's already begun  am not the most perfect speaker but i definitely try and she is a wonderful english speaker she just felt more comfortable saying and i'm heart and that's why i'm speaking in english because i'm more comfortable in english  thank you again is that be back for sharing this story with so with that and to keep everything connected in support of black lion hospital i'd thank you thank you thank you i want to share what i have seen and how i met this outstanding physician this committed to give up their time their treasure and their talent to every year for the last seventeen years participate in vaccination of children for polio in that endeavor we stayed in this hotel out the gate on and so this wonderful physician see it it's not the same hospital you talk about eight million people living in this have about four more and yet there are only two hospitals two government hospitals taking care of every patient that comes from either car accident door whether it's from any other second is so when i was invited to follow the rich are sellouts and the others and see what they do i was so choose cold or hot water but in a major hospital or not is how about there is not a single water and surgeries have been postponed because there is no water when i was there to visit with surgery was postponed it because then plate machine didn't work and i've seen people in pain laying there on the floor people outside lined up to be seen by this wonderful doctors energy and the manpower you had the commitment they have made and the through their angels to me i think they are angels because you know they're not saying ok we're done and let's go home and relax if we touch if we make a difference to one person it's time we support the cause whether it's by giving money or they're by participating in the auction i believe they are going back next month will be there as well to hope to see them when they're there but any small amount of help that we could give them is going to go a long way and i think about thank you for sharing your floor you look at the equipment they have you look at the medicines they have you have to be realistic and say this is impossible this is impossible this is not a quick fix this is not something we're going to make better in a year or two and we're trying to make this have some legs and if we're successful it's going to take us twenty to forty years to do this this is kind of early in the game if you will  and when you really think about it what we're trying to do over there is really hard because we're trying to change a system and we're trying to change people and in our own hospitals here that's hard trying to change behaviors in a hospital institute a new policy look at something a little differently the pushback and system change is really hard and then to multiply it and put it over into that country and that culture it isn't easy we've done we've really made some progress we've really made some progress and we are appreciated there i must say maybe two trips ago the dean of the medical school ask if we would become their exclusive if we would be the only organization they were work with and we certainly don't want that we can't do it but the affirmation was really nice to have them suggest that we're on the right track i think maybe the best affirmation we've had so far it definitely takes a large group of people to do this and we've tried to think things through as best we can when we bring equipment we try to bring spare parts we bring technicians we show them how to repair it everything we do tries to be teaching center we're not particularly interested in going over there and doing cases ourselves we can do that here in seattle but it's more important for us to work with their residents and their faculty and try to make their situation better as an organization i think for five years now we're starting to get a little bit of momentum and kind of a first for them they've done some other sort of international stuff but this is a big step and it's a great idea to kind of get a coalition of people from seattle and i hope you all will kind of stick with us and stay with us because we really do need a long perspective and we need to think of it as a coalition of a lot of people pulling together and if we can do it if we can do it for twenty years we could look back and say we really really big difference anyway at this table back here the plumbers without borders  were coming initially to help with some work in the black lion we've diverted them to a dialysis project and this is the craziest thing dialysis is if you look at the medicare budget it's the single largest expenditure for our government our head against the wall last time we were there will pick it up again this this fall and that's going to be kind of our major project wall maybe some of you know but there is a renovation going on at the hospital supposed to start in october i'm really really happy for it that's what we've always wanted and i hope at the end of the day it's a good thing renovating the hospital in many ways is the easy part of it it's like our bringing equipment teaching people to change how they approach health care that's the hard part to give you a tiny example of that and that is put extension cords zip type things so that there is nothing to get pulled on they put power strips around were appropriate and really made the wiring system in this operating much better between cases a cleaning lady came in dr richard don't go too far because we're going to end by hundreds of come back and talk to us about the specifics of this fundraiser and the goals that it has but first we have a video for you this video is a documentary that was actually a church at seattle