The Northup Humanitarian Award Recipients are:
Henry Maicki, MD for 2021 and Manish Mehta, PhD for 2022.
The Award presentation will take place at the meeting on Wednesday, April 27 at the Michigan Union in the Anderson Room. You are cordially invited to join us in person or via Zoom. Each recipient will share some memorable moments reflecting on their many humanitarian projects and how they have touched the people they served.
Dr. Henry Maicki was nominated by the West Bloomfield Rotary Club. Dr. Maicki is a true humanitarian, dedicating most of his life to serving others. Besides his devotion to his practice (first as an obstetrician, later as a Hospice doctor), he has an exceptional ability to bring people together to serve others. He served as a physician on many medical teams in Zambia, as a mentor to all the members of the medical team, (doctors, nurses, residents, pharmacists, medical students), and as a friend to the Zambian teachers that served as interpreters on the medical missions to the bush, the Ndola Rotarians who supported the OMNI George School, and the children themselves.
On his first Mission trip to Zambia, Africa in 2002, Henry recognized great needs of these people. He has since dedicated his life and passion to help the poor and orphaned children of Zambia through his work with the Orphan Medical Network International (known as OMNI). He has gone back for twenty years, serving as one of the physicians in treks out to villages in the bush. Henry has also served on the Board of Directors as the Medical Director for Orphan Medical Network International since 2013. He is a prominent supporter of OMNI and has conducted several fundraising events in Detroit and elsewhere in the US to raise funds.
Dr. Manish Mehta was nominated by the Rotary Club of Ann Arbor North and is well known throughout Rotary and the community at-large as a great humanitarian and Rotarian. He is an engineer in the automotive industry, a second-generation Rotarian and joined RCAAN in 1995. Dr. Mehta has shown great determination and dedication to organizing and managing at least 17 projects involving our Club members and several other D6380 sponsor clubs, including the Ann Arbor Rotary Club. Some highlights of his work include:
• Leading Project Dignity (2011-20) with several clubs in Kolkata (India) which involved 3 global grants (totaling $200,000) and achieved over 1,300 in-home toilets awarded to rural women-run households in Sundarbans, India, to stop open defecation. These toilets not only keep families safe from tiger attacks, but also assure the health and safety of women and girls, by protecting water supplies from contamination of human wastes
• He organized a $36,000 Global Grant project during 2018-20 with Rotary Clubs of Chandragiri (Nepal) and Singapore on reconstruction of four girls school sanitation systems and for an environmental pond restoration project (following their 2015 earthquake).
• He enthusiastically worked with Ann Arbor Rotary Club Past-President Ashish Sarkar, Medical NGO Palav and 12 Rotary Clubs in Michigan and Pune (India) (from May 2020-December 2021) to quickly organize and implement the $90,000 Pandemic Relief for Detroit Global Grant Project which distributed needed PPE items and food assistance funds to nearly 20 area hospitals, nursing homes, dental clinics and food banks. The project achieved great PR for Rotary in a media launch event held by Gleaners Food Bank (Detroit) on December 15, 2021.
The RCAA Peace Committee is honored to recognize these most deserving humanitarians!
