Tonight over 60 volunteers, mostly from the 3 local Rotary Clubs (Brockville, Prescott and 1000 Islands) showed what they had and set a new record. 626 food boxes were packed in 1 hour and 45 minutes! Unbelievable! Here are some photos of our volunteers in action at the space donated to us by Kriska Transport in Prescott:
What a great start to the loading process. Tomorrow night we will load our first container and continue through the weekend with lots of volunteers needed. We will be at the warehouse looking for help as follows:
Hope to see you there!
Eric – Thanks for documenting this amazing event.
David and I really wished we could have been there to help.
Hi Eric!
Looks like your group is off to another amazing year to help your friends in Belarus!!
I am looking for advice as 4 of our group, including myself, are headed to Belarus for 10 days at the end of April, 2008! It just sort of came together- timing wise. This is my 2nd trip but everyone else are first time visitors. Any suggestions on securing a driver/van? We are hoping to visit Bobruisk, Grodno/Lida and of course Minsk.
Our purpose is two-fold: to visit some of our families whose children we host and do some fact-finding on starting a small in-country effort to help children who are unable to travel due to chronic illness, handicaps or other factors. We still have the boy injured in the truck accident near Lida to visit and we continue to help his family regularly.
We are working with Mikhail of Hope for the Future and know that he will be making recommendations on sites needing help. We were thinking of focusing on the Grodno area since we have a lot of families in that area, including our injured Dima. We also have a lot of families in the Bobruisk area.
Our biggest concern is to find a project with a compassionate, honest leadership so the children/families are the recipients of the aid. We also are very interested in the foster care system that is just emerging in Belarus as a more humane way of caring for children when possible.
Pavel Shidlovsky is back in Minsk a bit early since his mother passed away a few days ago. He will be trying to help us as well, although he is focused on the governments push for in-country aid to camp sponsorship. He has been a great supporter of COC visits in the US and Canada, so we appreciate his attention overall.
If you or Dave Shaw have any suggestions, guidance, advice; we would really appreciate it!! When does your group go this spring??
Thank you!
Kate Van Dyck
COC – Alexandria, VA