The Mumbai 2007 team of Douglas Cunningham, Kay Easun, George Foster, Judy Snobelen, and Doug MacDougald is well started on the distribution of 7,500 bedkits in west central India. We spent the first day — after arriving at our hotel at 3 AM from Toronto — checking the sample bedkit and final organizing of the individual and group labels for each of the 22 sites.We then saw some of Mumbai with a train ride through where some of the 16 million inhabitants live and ending up in the downtown area. The view from the first, second, and women-only train cars showed colour, culture, and a range of poverty that immediately spoke to why Sleeping Children Around the World is here.
Mumbai is big, crowded, and chaotic and we got lost coming back from the train station to our hotel (Doug MacD. thought it was the “other” way). Auto-rickshaws are everywhere and two of them careened through the streets of Mumbai getting us safely back to our hotel.
The first distribution was 650 bedkits in Pune at two sites. It went quite well thanks to the well experienced Pune Rotary Club and Nitin Shah.
First observations are: People working at low skill manual job make less than $1.00 per day and live in poverty that is dirty, dusty, hot and crowded.
The 650 children aged 6 to 12 prior to receiving their bedkit were subdued, cautious, and apprehensive but anticipating this unusual day in their lives. The 650 kids after receiving their bedkit were just “kids” – excited, playing, and quite comfortable with hugs, high and low fives, and smiles. The 650 children left with a little more comfort and hope than yesterday.
Doug MacDougald,
for the SCAW 2007 Mumbai Travelling Team
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