Team Reports
• Lynette Jenkins
• Ted Swanston
• Laura Wey
• Lois Wey
• Chris Pratt
• Genille Gimbel

You can also download a PDF version of this report from our Distributions page.

Echoes from the past

Ted Swanston — Etobicoke, ON

My first ever trip for Sleeping Children was to Sri Lanka in 1998. Our Overseas Volunteer Organization was the Inner Wheel, wives of Rotarians, led by Pali Gunatilake. She had been involved with SCAW distributions for fourteen years.

Pali had a special presence. What struck me was the respect, bordering on reverence, with which she was treated wherever we went. What no one, not even Pali, knew was that she was seriously ill at the time. Because of Pali’s illness, distributions to Sri Lanka stopped after the 1998 distribution. Pali died of cancer in early 2000. Inner Wheel was just not able to handle the project after Pali’s passing.

When I returned to Sri Lanka this year, I met Varuni Cabraal, Pali’s daughter, and found out the history of SCAW’s involvement in Sri Lanka. Varuni explained that her mother had met Betty and Jim Sargeant, long-time SCAW volunteers, at a Rotary conference in Japan during the early 1980s. A close friendship developed and Betty and Pali discussed the idea of a bedkit program for Sri Lanka. Murray Dryden approved and Betty and Jim Sargeant and Gordon and June Brown were on the first SCAW distribution in 1985..

After Pali fell ill, there were no distributions in Sri Lanka until a chance encounter in 2002. Varuni was at her temple one day when a young man approached her and said he recognized her. Varuni did not remember ever meeting him, but the young man said he had seen her when he had received a bedkit at a distribution many years before. This had an immense impact on Varuni. She decided to contact SCAW about the possibility of restarting the bedkit program. Varuni’s husband, Sidney, a Rotarian, and the Rotary Club of Kelaniya supported the idea. SCAW distributions recommenced in 2003 and have occurred annually since.

One final note: as a young girl, Varuni had accompanied her mother on only one SCAW distribution. Perhaps it was destiny that this should be the distribution at which a young man would see Varuni and remember her many years later.

And so the SCAW story continues.

Thank you, donors, for making it all possible.