Category Archives: 2008 Delivery Prep

Blog posts about preparation for spring 2008 aid delivery.

Svetlana!

Two things occurred today to inspire me to create a short video.

The first was the news that a little girl at the Chausy Orphanage, who I met last spring, was now being supported by a Brockville family. Svetlana has leukemia and she really won a little place in my heart last year. She and her sister were moved to this orphanage because it had a better nutrition program than any other orphanage thanks to Canadian Aid for Chernobyl. However a local family is now supplementing that program to help the orphanage provide her with even better food including more fresh fruit and vegetables.

The second was an e-mail from a man in New Zealand who found us on the net and really enjoyed my videos from 2006 and has been asking me to make some more. He has also made donations to the organization to directly help children in Belarus and his most recent will go to purchase educational toys for the children in the “Invalid Children” Orphanage.

Isn’t the world a great place! Everyday this organization finds ways to inspire me and others to do good things … and together we are making a difference! Although this is more of a “Public Service Announcement” then a video, these are the thoughts that filled my head today!

Enjoy the short video:

If you can’t see the video you need Flash Player 8, click here to get it. Reboot your computer once it is installed

Last Load Loaded at Last!

It was a long night and the most difficult container to load but the 6th and final container is now loaded and ready for it’s long voyage to Belarus. The 6 containers will be hauled by truck to the Port of Montreal where they will be loaded on a ship. Once across the ocean they still have a long land trip across Europe to Belarus and, with any luck at all, will be waiting for the delegation to arrive in Chausy! Of course there is Canada Customs and Belarus Customs to deal with at either end of the journey and that in itself is no small feat!

This 6th container has lots of stuff for two destinations, the Chausy Orphanage and the Chausy Hospital. There were a lot of odd shaped items in this load making it complicated and time consuming. In this picture it may look like we have discovered a stow-away, but in actual fact Alex had crawled in underneath some stuff and we passed in packages of Bounty to stuff in and fill all the holes.

Stow-away

Once everything for the orphanage was loaded we squared off the section with boxes of (much needed) toilet paper to divide it from the hospital delivery:

Chausy Divider

Once we had everything loaded for the hospital (another lot of odd sized stuff) and the load was deemed full …

Is it full?

… our loaders decided they could fit in a few more boxes so Dave rounded up some boxes of infant clothing and they managed to stuff in … 27 more boxes!!! Now that’s a load!

A real full load!

Without giving away any secrets I noticed some pretty cool stuff in there for the Orphanage and I can’t wait to get to Chausy to see the faces on the kids when we unload this container!

I may post the odd update between now and then, but make sure you “tune-in” to this website from March 29 to April 12 for ongoing updates of our deliveries and experiences with our friends in Belarus!

Eric

We’re Getting Close!

The piles in the warehouse are getting smaller and we are down to one container left to load (tomorrow, Monday Feb 25 at 6:30 PM)! It is an activity that is often overlooked and underappreciated but it is as important as the delivery in Belarus. If we don’t get it loaded in Canada, it does not get delivered in Belarus and the accuracy of the inventory is critical to enable the delivery to happen at all! Loading involves more than just lugging! We have had people sorting, palletizing, inventorying, wrapping, labelling, cleaning up and many more jobs than even I am aware of!

Here are some shots from today’s important work:

Ed and Murray have been there everyday driving the fork trucks for us. Here is Ed hard at it:

Ed

and here is Murray:

Murray

Here are some of the guys loading:

Loading

Here are two more guys waiting for another pallet load:

Waiting

Here is some of the gang taking a well deserved “Timmy” break:

Break

Here is container number 4 all loaded and ready to go:

Container #4

and here is number 5:

Container Number 5

And for all you guys who spent your day INSIDE the containers here is what they look like on the outside just waiting to go!

The Cans ready to go!

One left to go … hope to see you tomorrow night!

Eric