Lonnie Hacket
Lonnie Hackett - Healthy Kids/Brighter Future
When 23-year old Lonnie Hackett approached the podium at the Saturday lunch session at the district conference, he quickly squelched any thoughts of a narcissistic Millennial. As a freshman at Bowdoin college, he had an epiphany about his shallow life of “football practice, studying, and working out.” This Bangor native and football star made a commitment to service, whatever that would bring. Lonnie had a spontaneous attack of “Service Above Self!”
Lonnie spoke to the Rotary Club of Brunswick on March 31, 2013. These Rotarians jumped at the chance to help him with a commitment to apply for a Global Grant which was approved six months later. The Rotary Clubs of Bath Sunrise, Brunswick Coastal, Portland, Ipswich MA and the Nkwazi Club of Lusaka, joined the effort as full partners.
Meanwhile, Lonnie graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and moved to Zambia with the hope of funding this project which had become his vision. He saw the solution in community school classroom teachers who would be trained as health workers. With a large percentage of children attending school, classroom teachers had easy access to these vulnerable children. From this idea, he created the non-profit, “Healthy Kids/Brighter Future.” www.healthykidsbrighterfuture.org
Since June of 2014, Lonnie has directed the training of frontline teacher/health workers and helped over 11,000 of the poorest children to access life saving health care. Through health evaluations, education in disease prevention, vitamin supplements and safe drinking water, the children of N’gombe truly have a “Brighter Future.”
During Lonnie’s two weeks in Maine, he has spoken at the Rotary Clubs of Sanford-Springvale, Exeter, Bangor, Boothbay Harbor and Oxford Hills as well as to the Brunswick Community at an evening talk at the Curtis Memorial Library. Lonnie returns to Zambia on May 9 where he will continue to grow the program with the cooperation and admiration of many government and NGO organizations. This dynamic young man will spend the next two years assuring the sustainability of our Rotary Foundation dollars as well as perfecting a model that has the potential to change the lives of the very poorest children in other emerging countries.