Line of Sight

“We can care deeply—selflessly—about those we know, but that empathy rarely extends beyond our line of sight.” These words from the 2014 movie Interstellar weren’t just a few seconds of entertainment on a flight back from Honduras earlier this year, but accurately summed up the opportunity AND the responsibility that came along with that experience.

Alongside other members of the Rotary Club of Toledo, while attending an International Project Fair, I toured the garbage dump communities in San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa, pushing the boundaries of our club’s motto of “Service Above Self” and stretching our empathy beyond the familiar confines of our hometown and into the harsh realities of a world often unseen.

As our van turned the corner at the entrance to El Ocotillo, I was awestruck. And four days later, when we visited Buen Samaritano in Tegucigalpa, the welcome was the same. The community made signs and waved balloons. I can still hear the noise makers and the cheers, genuine excitement to show us their home. This welcome, juxtaposed with the reality of what I saw, was jarring.

In El Ocotillo, many of the homes had dirt floors and walls made from plastic and metal scraps recovered from the nearby dump. These communities depend on the dump for their livelihood and survival.

In Buen Samaritano, while we saw similar conditions, we also saw a community on the rise—I’ve never been so excited to see a single faucet inside a home. And I saw joy and pride in the newly built (not yet completed but already well utilized) family life center.

The indomitable spirit of the Honduran people stood out. We met mothers who send their children to school with a prayerful hope for a better future. We met community leaders, exhausted but unwavering in their determination to lift up their communities. And then there were the children—their smiles infectious, their joy and their zest for life a testament to the human spirit’s ability to persevere.

And, I saw International Samaritan, like a beacon in the darkness, providing a lifeline to these communities—through scholarships, through medical clinics, through clean water, and through incredible champions like Tucker, Ronia, Erika, and their team, who love the communities like their own.

As the final scenes of Interstellar flickered on the video screen in front of me, the images of our trip and the faces of the people we met raced through my mind: mothers and children committed to education, young men and women realizing their dreams of work outside the dump, but also the countless children working alongside their parents in that dump still looking for an answer.

The trip solidified my commitment to “Service Above Self” (growing up around St. John’s Jesuit in Toledo, we called it “Men For Others”) in ways I never imagined. Alongside my fellow Rotarians, I saw a stark reminder of the inequalities that exist in our world, but most importantly I witnessed the transformative power of empathy, the ripple effect of small acts of kindness that can illuminate even the darkest corners no matter how far they may seem from our “field of view.”

Kevin Mullan, Volunteer

Kevin is the founder and CEO of KPM Consulting in Toledo, OH, where he resides with his wife, Dani, and three children. He is a 1999 graduate of St. John’s Jesuit High School and previously visited the garbage dump community in Guatemala with International Samaritan (then Central American Ministries) alongside Fr. Don Vettese, SJ in 2006. In 2024-25, Kevin will serve as the President of the Rotary Club of Toledo, one of the 15 largest clubs in the world.