 Team Reports |
Bringing back smilesBill Weldon — Toronto, ON
What an exciting two weeks! Every distribution day was interesting and each was different. I worked hard, but it was fun. Mingling with the children, leading them in the song "Head and shoulders, knees and toes," letting a few of them look through my binoculars, these are all happy memories. But best of all were the smiles as I gave the bedkit to each recipient. I might say "This is for you, from someone in Canada." My words may not have been understood by the Bengali-speaking children. But they did understand my smile, and the love I was extending to each of them from donors back home. Sometimes I got an exuberant grin in return, sometimes just a shy smile and a slight nod of the head. I have a few thousand smiles to bring back to Canada with me.
Several distributions were in very rural areas. We drove past miles of rice paddies. Always there were people along the road: walking, riding bicycles, and pedalling tricycle carts loaded with every possible item. We reached Chowdanga. A wall surrounded the compound where the children gathered. They were given a new set of clothes and prepared to be photographed. I was outside the wall with the crowd of waiting parents. Over five hundred children received bedkits that day and an equal number of parents watched anxiously for their children to emerge through a small gate. The bedkit that I gave was perhaps the first gift the child had ever received. Then would come the trip home, perhaps with several children and their bulky bedkits loaded onto one of those three-wheeled carts. Our Rotary Club partners had often arranged for children to come from villages a considerable distance away. At the village of Gangadharpur, we visited the home of a child who had just received a bedkit. There were several children ranging in age from our beneficiary — perhaps nine years old — down to a naked toddler. The family shared one room of living space. Now the children could share the large mattress and mosquito net. The items in a bedkit usually benefit more than just the one child. Mother was stitching beads onto a sari which was stretched out on a wooden frame. Each sari would take her a week to complete. For this, she would be paid the equivalent of ten dollars. In a nearby space, several men were sewing sequins onto a sari. Working fifteen-hour days, they made three dollars per day.
A bedkit given to one child in a poor village can't solve every social and economic problem. It can, however, provide warmth and encouragement to sleep well and study hard. In return, there's that smile that I bring back for you. |
