There's far more to the story behind the prosthetic than was presented in the update. I've been working off and on for a variety of non-profit and charitable ventures for some time. This month marks the third year I'll be heading off to volunteer at the Family Retreat, which is only in its sixth year - many of the families whom I regularly work with have been attending the camp since the outset, and I will fully admit that like any teacher, I fell prey to the natural inclination to treat those under one's tutelage as a member of one's own family. The prosthetic is a natural consequence of everything I do - I spent three months interning for one of the largest NGOs in the world, starting merely weeks after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. While I didn't have anything to do with their relief efforts, working on cataloging their various pamphlets and providing general IT support, I've been proud of everything I did there.

The fact is, my background isn't merely in anthropology, I'm a scholar of religion in the truest sense of the term, I've spent the better part of the last decade studying the underlying mechanics of human beliefs as they relate to social development. That's ultimately the real reason why I'm involved with this project. There's something about comic books and superheroes that reach to the deepest subconscious parts of a person, instilling the confidence and ambition to surpass one's difficulties, and I've found that utterly fascinating. Obviously, not everyone faces the same difficulties - I've never hidden the fact that I'm autistic, but the reality is that I never received the formal diagnosis until two months before my 30th birthday. It was suspected by many, but until I had confirmation, there was nothing anyone could do to support me. This meant that I had to go through twenty years of schooling, including two different college programs, without any sort of viable support.

What led me to become a scholar in religion (more specifically, mythology and folklore) was precisely the result of all the stories I'd grown up around. My grandparents had the Fleischer & Famous Superman cartoons om VHS, and some of my earliest memories were in watching them with my grandfather. While I didn't collect comics of my own accord until graduating college, I'd always considered the genre to be the quintessential American folklore for the 20th century (though I will admit that my tastes run much closer to the untranslated Brothers Grimm), and was greatly pleased when I was given the opportunity to become one of the key founders of Missing Worlds Media (truth be told, I'm the one who actually named the company), because it gave me a foundation upon which to apply the skills and knowledge given by my background.

This prosthetic is something that I see as a form of vindication to my long-held belief that ambition and altruism need not be in conflict, and in fact has been something of a catalyst to me. Upon seeing the versatility of 3D printing for this particular purpose, I've begun to explore the possibility of using the same technology towards the problems of food and water security. While I've had a hobby in designing greenhouses since before MWM came into being, after this prosthetic, I've come to realize that said hobby could be put to use to help just as many people as this prosthetic.

And that, I believe, is the real importance of our having taken this opportunity - if it's inspired me to dust off some old designs to use with new technology, what could it lead others to do?