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Murray Dryden's Practical VisionPeter Adams — Peterborough, ON There is a story about a couple from Canada who were so shocked by conditions in a developing country that they returned home determined to do something about it. Having realized, quite rightly, that bicycles were extremely valuable and useful in that country, they decided to fill a container with bikes and ship it there. They had no trouble rounding up bikes in their hometown. Shipping the container was not cheap but that was no problem either. As the story goes, the container arrived safely and was opened in a public place. Several people, including children, were killed and many more were injured in the ensuing free-for-all. The bikes disappeared into the community. One of the lessons from this story is that compassion, sympathy, and love alone are not a sufficient foundation for aid programs for the poor in the world's poorest countries where Sleeping Children works. When Jill and I first went with a SCAW team, even though Jill, in particular, had worked with children overseas before, our first instinct was to give stuff (anything we had) to every street child we met. We quickly came to realize that even quite small, concealable, gifts could put such a child at risk. Murray Dryden, founder of SCAW, was a remarkable man. As I understand it, he took the idea of giving out bed mats to poor children and turned it into the extremely systematic bedkit program that we know today. Bedkits are a bundle of items that vary from country to country, but all are purchased in the country concerned and wrapped in a mattress or carrying bag.
With the help of volunteer organizations in those countries, a team of Canadian volunteers distribute the bedkits to thousands of children selected according to strict criteria. These criteria include a balance of boys and girls, between the ages of six and twelve, and, most important of all, having a family support system that allows the child to keep the bedkit safely and to make full use of it. Murray believed that a good night's rest was a wonderful gift for a growing child and especially for children in developing countries whose families are among the poorest of the poor. The genius of Murray Dryden's vision of long-term help for poor children was the way he boiled it down into a system that could be operated entirely by volunteers. I will not dwell here on the Canadian end of things, how the funds are gathered and accounted for, maintaining contact with the developing countries, and so on. This is an enormous and, in most charities, a very professional task in itself. You should visit the SCAW website [www.scaw.org] and read about this. I will try to describe the organization and work of a travelling team like ours.
SCAW sends out around twelve such teams each year. First, six ordinary people, who usually do not know each other and who may have little experience overseas, volunteer and go through SCAW's screening procedures. Then they meet for briefings and pre-preparation. The team leader is someone who has had previous experience with SCAW, usually in the country concerned. A great deal of the briefing is about the system of distributing and tracking the thousands of bedkits in the field. SCAW has refined this to a workable formula. We arrive in the field with bundles of donor labels, in order, prepared in Canada for each distribution site. The local partners have prepared lists of children who have met SCAW criteria. The team and the local people process all these children, checking that bedkits get to the right families. Teams visit homes of previous year's recipients and interview parents about the quality and usefulness of this year's bedkit. Murray Dryden believed that, when properly organized, ordinary Canadians working together can deliver worthwhile aid to children in need. He was a very compassionate and loving person but I now realize that he was also a very tough-minded person who set rules and targets that have allowed all those who support SCAW to do good work, year in and year out. Our team in Honduras now knows better than ever that there is a huge need among the children of the country we visited. But this no longer overwhelms us. We know that our small, carefully planned contribution does help and does give hope to each bedkit child. |
