As published in the Victoria Province
April 11, 2009
by Elaine O'Connor
Victoria's Judy Dryden is devoting her days to ensuring the world's needy children get a good night's sleep.
The retired public health nurse is a volunteer with Sleeping Children Around the World (SCAW), a charity her parents Margaret and Murray Dryden (parents of hockey stars Ken and Dave Dryden) founded in 1970. But it wasn't until after she retired that she was able to join an international mission to Bangladesh in 2007 and see for herself the difference a safe sleep makes to poor children.
The Canadian registered charity provides bed kits (containing a treated mosquito net, a mat, blankets and pillow, school supplies, towel, shoes, hats, a school uniform and water bottle) to children in the developing world. On Dryden's trip to Pune, India this past February, they came close to distributing their one-millionth kit — 999,850 to date and another 150 to go. The group should reach their goal after a distribution in the Philippines this April.
"We're now at the one million bed kits distributed mark," says the 57-year-old. "Mom and Dad would just be so gratified to see that this has worked."
Pune was the site of SCAW's very first donations almost 40 years ago. There, Dryden helped distribute kits to 3,000 children living in poor rural villages of Sarole Pathar, Javalebaleshwar, Sunjalwadi Pathar, Modhaliwadi and Nandur Kandarmal.
"It was coming full circle," Dryden said. "Being back where Dad started it all and talking to women who had received those early kits as children to see what effects it had on them. Just listening to them talk about it. Besides better sleep, one said she learned her ABCs by reading the pattern on her quilt ... one lady who was now a nurse said she still had the blanket from the bed kit she got as a child in 1983."
As a nurse, Dryden was particularly struck by the health conditions she saw in some of the children, noting eye conditions like strabismus and even blindness appeared to be more common, malnutrition and related hair discoloration were obvious, and some children had burns or amputations from accidents they suffered while working.
The bed kits, Dryden said, are not only crucial to the children's sleep, but to their overall health — the use of treated mosquito nets can radically reduce the incidence of malaria, which can be a major threat to small children, and the water bottle help kids carry potable water with them.
Since its inception, SCAW has raised more than $22 million to provide bedkits for close to one million children in 33 countries, including Bangladesh, Kenya, Honduras, Uganda, Nicaragua, Togo and Tanzania.
It started as a retirement project for Dryden's father. He was an amateur photographer and on one trip to India in the late 1960s he tripped over a child sleeping on the street. He realized he could do something to help children who didn't have a safe place to sleep. In SCAW's first year he and his wife provided bed kits to 50 children in India, and every year their efforts grew. They started with $3,000 of their personal funds and untimately donated some $3 million, as well as leaving their Toronto house to the organization as a head office for 200 volunteers. Murray Dryden was awarded the Order of Canada for his efforts before he passed away in 2004.
The Toronto-based volunteer-run charity also does outreach in Canadian schools. Dryden says many of the donations for bed kits come from concerned B.C. residents and local schools like Richmond's Ecole des Navigateurs have pitched in.
Each $35 donation to SCAW buys one bed kit, sourced locally in each country, and donors receive a picture of the sponsored child and their kit. The charity is hosting a fundraiser breakfast in Toronto on April 29 at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel.
Learn more about Sleeping Children Around the World or make a donation or give a gift.
Read blog entries from SCAW's on-the-ground volunteers, get the latest news about fundraisers and events or visit their photo gallery to see bed kit distribution in action.
If you have any tips on B.C. residents' work in or for the developing world you can email them to eoconnor@theprovince.com.
