[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 188 (Thursday, November 29, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S7235]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO ELIAS THOMAS

  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, each year, the 1.4 million members of the 
National Association of Realtors recognize five of their own with the 
Good Neighbor Award for their service to others, locally or globally. I 
am delighted to congratulate 2018 Good Neighbor Elias Thomas of 
Shapleigh, ME, for inspiring contributions from his hometown to some of 
the poorest villages in India.
  Mr. Thomas, broker-owner of EXIT Key Real Estate in Shapleigh, has 
spent 40 years volunteering with Rotary International. His 
compassionate work started with his local chapter, where he helped to 
build meditation gardens for those with mental illness and developed 
job and housing assistance programs for newly released prison inmates. 
His international efforts began in the late 1990s, when he travelled to 
Cozumel, Mexico, for a project to prevent the island's garbage dump 
from polluting the water system.
  In 2001, Mr. Thomas journeyed to India to assist in Rotary's 
signature project of preventing and eradicating polio. The deplorable 
living conditions and the gratitude of villagers for the Rotarians' 
assistance convinced him that India was where his energy and commitment 
were most needed.
  Mr. Thomas has returned to India every year since then, leading teams 
of volunteers and personally immunizing about 500 children against 
polio. He has raised $40,000 to help pay for the corrective surgeries 
of some 1,000 victims of the disease. Throughout his four decades as a 
Rotarian, Mr. Thomas has raised more than $350,000 for Rotary 
International's charitable endeavors.
  During a 2008 trip to India, he became aware of another dire 
situation there: the lack of safe drinking water in desert communities 
in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan, which can lead to illness 
and death due to dysentery.
  Mr. Thomas assembled a team of 78 volunteers from eight countries and 
worked with village councils on a plan to build dams to capture the 
runoff from monsoons for drinking water and crop irrigation. Every year 
for the last 10 years, Mr. Thomas has led a total of 350 volunteers 
from around the world, and working with local residents and without 
mechanized equipment, they have hand-built nine dams that provide clean 
and safe water to more than 45,000 people.
  A fellow Rotarian who has been part of that team describes Mr. Thomas 
this way: ``Elias has deep faith that we can bring about change. He's a 
man that has dreams, and while most people talk about what they wish 
they could do to help others, he does it. To Elias, everyone in 
humanity is critically important.''
  Elias Thomas exemplifies the motto of Rotary International, ``Service 
Above Self.'' His caring spirit and boundless energy are improving and 
even saving lives here at home and around the world.

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