This is the journal for my first trip as a volunteer traveller with Sleeping Children Around the World (SCAW), a Canadian charity that provides bedkits to children in underdeveloped countries.
In addition to being of some possible interest to friends and family, I hope it might be useful for anyone who is contemplating a trip like this.
Since its founding in 1970 by Murray and Margaret Dryden (parents of NHLers Ken and Dave), SCAW has raised more than $20 million to provide bedkits for 935,350 children in 32 countries.
Bedkits are pulled together in the destination country with the help of an in-country partner (usually a Rotary Club or Lyons Club), and are purchased with donated funds. Anyone may donate, and that is how everyone first gets involved. If you'd like to donate, please go the web site.
One cool thing ...
Donors receive a picture of their bedkits with the children who received them (see top right). The gratitude is evident in the smiling faces. Some of them trek many miles to get to a distribution point.
Another cool thing ...
All donated funds go to purchase the bedkits. Administration is funded from an endowment set up by the Drydens, and we travellers all pay our own expenses.
On our 19-day trip to Bangladesh in October, we will be distributing 8,000 bedkits.
Even though departure is more than 4 months away, preparations are well underway. I have been contacted by my team leaders, Richard and Joan Hryniw. Flights have been arranged, travel insurance purchased, and this morning I received my first round of vaccinations at a travel clinic in Mississauga, accompanied by a 20-minute speech covering all the ways one can be stricken in that part of the world.
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