Team Reports |
So Many VolunteersJeff McDougall — Kettleby, ON
Sleeping Children Around the World is a unique organization in that 100% of donations given for the children is actually spent on the children. This can only be accomplished with the dedicated work of many volunteers. Office volunteers in Toronto accept and record donations, prepare labels for the distributions, ensure that the travelling teams have all they need, review the pictures, and mail out pictures, newsletters, and tax receipts. Travelling volunteers like me oversee the distributions overseas in cooperation with our Overseas Volunteer Organization [OVO] the Ambattur Rotary Club who were with us through the entire distribution. On this trip I became increasingly aware of yet another group of overseas volunteers. These are the local helpers who assist us by carrying the heavy bedkits for the smaller children, tell the children to “smile” (“Sheerie” in Tamil), help to keep the children in lines, or take them to the washrooms if needed.
They also move bedkits to a location from which we can hand them to the children, bring us water, and help in many other ways. These local helpers come from a wide variety of sources. We have had helpers from the girl guides, Rotaractors and Interactors (young Rotarians), high school students, young national service, Junior Red Cross, teachers, parents, scouts, and many more. Each of them has a different reason for being there to help, and each story we heard from them warmed our hearts. Satish was our driver in Chennai (making him one of the bravest people I have ever met). For the first distribution, Satish quietly observed what we were doing, what we were wanting the children to do, and where we struggled. At subsequent distributions, Satish jumped in and became very useful, gently helping the children to sit still, talking to them clearly and quietly in their own language, for a picture in the midst of an exciting and confusing day.
Baraney was a girl in Grade 11 who, along with a small group of her friends, had been asked to come to the primary school to help on their day off. She kindly and naturally took charge of her friends and made sure they carried the heavy bedkits for the small children out to their waiting parents, and helped to hand the bedkit and child over to the right parent. I didn’t appreciate how much this day meant to her, until, as we were about to leave, she took me aside and asked me to make sure that I didn’t forget her and the help that she gave. Sometimes we even recruit extra hands along the way. Raymond was staying at the same residence as us near Sri Puram. As we talked over dinner, he became very interested in the distribution, so we asked him to come with us the following day. As it turned out, we needed an extra hand to help move the bedkits to a place where I could hand them to the children, and Raymond happily volunteered. When we were done, I turned to thank Raymond, but he had already left. When I saw him back at the residence he came up to me all smiles. He told me that he had come to India for six weeks to get away from his busy life in Holland. Then he thanked me for letting him take part, saying that he had been able to find some peace here but, after helping SCAW, he could go home happy. It was great to see the distributions through the eyes of these volunteers. Thanks to them for making the distributions work. |
