Tue. May 12, 2009
Bed kits received like Christmas presents by impoverished children around the world
By LOIS LEGGE Features Writer
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| Clarence Deyoung, a 20-year volunteer with Sleeping Children Around the World, stands in his Hammonds Plains home with one of the bedkits he distributes to children in developing countries. The Canadian non-profit organization provides a bed kit for every $35 donation. (INGRID BULMER / Staff) |
MOST CANADIANS take their beds for granted. They can usually count on clean clothes too, school supplies for their children and not dying from mosquito bites.
But Clarence Deyoung has met families who sleep on dirt floors, face the risk of malaria and can’t afford even basic medical care.
So, for the past 20 years the Hammonds Plains man has paid his own way to places like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Honduras to deliver bed kits he says are more like cherished Christmas presents than basics for the impoverished children he meets.
Working with partner organizations in the affected countries, Deyoung and others bring much needed mattresses, pillows and blankets; clothes, school supplies and mosquito nets (when needed to ward off malaria) to children aged six to 12.
They’re all volunteers with the Canadian non-profit Sleeping Children Around the World (SCAW), which provides a bed kit for every $35 donation.
Murray and Margaret Dryden, the late parents of hockey great Ken Dryden, started the charity in 1970. It has since raised millions of dollars. It delivered its one millionth bed kit to a needy child overseas earlier this year.
"In many cases (it’s) the only thing new these kids will ever get in their life and they are just so excited and they are so appreciative. It’s absolutely amazing," says the 58-year-old retiree, who figures a trip to India this coming July will be his 26th or 27th mission for the charity.
Not everyone can afford to make as many trips as Deyoung since those who travel for the organization do so at their own cost. He estimates each trip ranges from $3,000-$5,000. But even so, the organization has no shortage of volunteers. In fact, it now has a waiting list of about 200 wanting to travel abroad, Deyoung says.
He puts their enthusiasm and the success of the organization down to several factors including the fact that 100 per cent of every $35 donation goes toward the kit supplies and every one who gives receives a picture of the child who benefitted from their donation.
SCAW organizers provide the money to churches, community groups or other non-profits in the foreign countries and they in turn buy the supplies most needed. Teams of six from SCAW then travel to the countries and deliver the kits to children, who have their pictures taken next to the supplies and the name of the donor.
"They like seeing the result . . . of their donations," says Deyoung, who started volunteering with the organization in 1989 after selling his Toronto-based computer business to Apple. He returned to his native Nova Scotia six years later.
"We all, everyday, support many, many, many, very worthwhile organizations, but it’s something in our human nature that we like to see something back and . . . very often we give and give and give and it seems to go in no-man’s-land and you never know where it in fact ever ends up."
But the pictures, he says "help fill that need."
"The other thing was that, although he didn’t like the word marketing, Mr. Dryden was quite a marketer himself in that, very often, when people get pictures back it’s a reminder for them to send in another $35."
The organization doesn’t directly solicit donations, says Deyoung, noting the founder felt people should give because they wanted to give not because they were pressured to donate.
Deyoung and other volunteers often give presentations about their work at schools and to community groups. And often that’s enough to get people involved in the organization, supported by a $3-million "legacy fund" from the late founders, which helps pay for things like postage, phone bills and other administrative costs.
Deyoung says he stays involved — travelling to India, the Philippines, Ecuador, Nicaragua and other places — because he sees first hand the impact $35 can make. The father of two grown children also serves on the charity’s all-volunteer board and executive committee. And he’s in charge of overseas distribution.
"It’s phenomenally rewarding work, but you know I do it simply because I have the time to and my belief is that anybody who has two arms, two legs, a heartbeat and some time should be doing whatever they can for the less fortunate in our world," says Deyoung, acknowledging the trips are often emotionally draining.
"Rarely a day goes by when the team is not in tears over some situation that we’ve run across," he says.
Not having enough bed kits to go around is often one of the most difficult aspects of the deliveries.
"We always have people gathering in the villages hoping we will have some left over. . .
"We’ve seen so many children with medical conditions that don’t have the money to be able to get that medical fix, if you will. We’ve seen one little 11-year-old girl who had lived for the best part of a year with worms because her mom didn’t have the money for the medication and so our team jumped in and bought her the medication and she recovered fantastic.
"Another little girl . . . her mom and dad were gone out for food and she was left alone in her hut and had a little propane burner that blew up and this poor little girl was burnt from head to foot. . . . She couldn’t open her mouth to eat properly, so again we arranged to have three operations for her.
"This now is something that we as individual teams have done, this has nothing to do with Sleeping Children, but it just grabs you by (the) heart and it’s so sad to see these kinds of things go on that, if it was here in our society, could be fixed. . . . We’re very, very, very fortunate to be living in the country we are."
(llegge@herald.ca)
Go to www.scaw.org for more information or contact Deyoung at clarence@scaw.org.
