As published in the Owen Sound Sun Times
Monday, May 10, 2010
Posted By DICK WAUGH
From time to time we see where people in various organizations go on missions to aid those in developing countries. Usually developing means that they are desperate and in need of aid.
Canada has a good habit of responding to these issues and has put up tens of millions of dollars to help with the earthquake that ravaged Haiti.
There were concerts, fund drives and dinners all to support the Haiti relief campaign. Charitable organizations alone in Canada raised over $150 million. The Canadian government matched donations.
That was good in this instance, but soon it is forgotten and we as individuals get back to our normal concerns, like taxes, insurance, gas prices, hydro blackouts and even who is going to win the Stanley Cup.
And yet, some who go into the fields of developing countries return to Canada with a whole new outlook.
In the past few months I attended the Amabel Men's Club and on two occasions it had speakers who had gone into developing countries and came back with new appreciation of just how desperate things can be.
Dave Hicks representing the club went to Cambodia under the Hope International Development Agency, headquartered in New Westminster, British Columbia.
Dave, who was the first president the Amabel club had, was to build a community well for a village in Cambodia. The membership had raised $5,000 for this project and an anonymous donor provided yet another $5,000.
The club was aware through Hope International that children were "struggling to survive, drinking water from filthy ditches" that were clearly contaminated and used by any number of animals and fraught with hordes of insects.
Among those things that impressed him was this: Those villages without a well were sad and with many infections obvious. Those villages with a well were happy and it showed in pictures taken while Dave Hicks was there.
So the club did their well and Dave returned to Canada with a different impression of under developed countries.
Then Jack Diverty told about his journey to Nicaragua and the club project for Sleeping Children Around the World.
The Amabel executive asked members to each give $35 for a bed kit to provide a mattress, pillow, blanket, mosquito net, clothes, towel, and school supplies, depending where children who need the kits are located. The members of the group gave $2,500 for kits and the club matched this with another $2,500.
In Jack's case he (and his wife Jackie) volunteered to go and distributed the kits for the club. Under the rules of Sleeping Children all those involved are doing so for the love of being there.
The kits are put together in the country where the children are located, providing work for the locals, elimination of transportation costs and a boost to the local economy.
They were in Nicaragua and had 10 days to distribute the kits and as hosts they decided where the kits should go. No family gets more than one kit.
Said Jack, "There is no social security, no OHIP, nothing that we expect and we feel is our right. Their conditions are very bad."
And he adds, "You feel like a rock star with these children. I would go back in a heart beat."
He saw what goes on for kids in Nicaragua and with these two speakers so did the Amabel Men's Club.
Recently there was a television documentary concerning Free the Children, an international initiative where children help children. A person from our world went on a mission and asked a child what they wanted for the village.
Her answer was simple. "We are very happy in our village. Thank you and we don't really need anything."
Now go out and bounce that question of populations on this side of the economic world. And away we go with our disgruntlements. Taxes, gas prices, bank charges, insurance premiums and on and on it goes.
Article ID# 2571350
