A 16 year old English boy is living with the Upishana Indians on the Brazilian border. The task: to move thousands of wild cattle through a narrow path in the rain forest to transport them down the river to market. After a few months, Stan Brock is given his own horse, a wild bronco that had previously killed two of its owners. Brock ended up injured and in immediate need of medical care; unfortunately the nearest doctor was 26 days away on foot.
Later, after the experience Brock had an idea, from meeting the astronaut Ed Mitchell. On telling his story, Mitchell said: “I was on the moon and only 3 days from a doctor.”
50 years later and Stan Brock has no money, possessions and lives on oatmeal and fruit donated by friends. Brock is the visionary who set up and coordinates the Remote Area Programme (RAM). The initial goal - a mobile group of volunteer doctors, nurses, dentists, optometrists - was to provide free health care to the poor in developing countries. But Brock identified the need for a particularly poor group - in the US.
In 1992 he set up camp in Tennessee. Patients drove hundreds of miles to get there, camping and queuing in their thousands for treatment. Since then there have been 380 clinics, attending to over 200,000 poor people who can’t afford to see a doctor.
“I’m a huge fan of volunteerism. Not just because it’s needed, though of course it is, but it gives the individual a sense of priced. We provide a helping hand along the way.”
Not every leader is or should be a Stan Brock, but it’s worth asking the question: “are we using our leadership position and authority for the wider good or simply to advance our own personal interests”?