Our first full day in Belgaum is being spent on several activities:
winding down from the travel of last week in the Mumbai area; seeing
several suppliers of items that were produced for the SCAW Belgaum
bedkit; visiting two previous bedkit recipients;
and meeting with our Overseas Volunteer Partners, The Rotary Club of
Belgaum, for our Pre-distribution Meeting in the evening.
After a leisurely breakfast and an opportunity to sleep in, we
headed to two of our our suppliers. The first supplier looks after the
girl's dresses and frocks plus the boy's shorts and shirts. The owner
of this business, Ramesh, and his staff work for
2 months night and day to put the SCAW order together. In addition,
Ramesh attends each Belgaum distribution centre to ensure that the
children receive the proper sizes and do not have any zipper problems.
He has been supplying items for SCAW bedkits for
over 15 years. The second visit was to our sweater manufacturer -
another small family business. Preparing 5,000 sweaters requires one
month's production and the owner informed us that the Belgaum order is
the biggest that he has ever prepared. In both
cases, these important suppliers asked their staff to come in on their
day off to host the SCAW Team and they were happy to oblige.
After visiting the suppliers, we left Belgaum City for a 30 minute
drive to a forested rural area in hill country to visit the homes of two
children who received bedkits last year. In both cases, the bedkit
items were in good use and the two families
were more than pleased to show us their homes where their animals (eg:
cows) also reside. There is no doubt that the bedkits were valued and
used. The fathers in both cases were labourers who worked where ever
they could find work. This gave our team the
opportunity to appreciate the obvious need of those receiving SCAW
bedkits.
The evening will be spent with our Rotary Partners reviewing the
schedules and plans for the next two weeks. We can assure our donors
that their dollars are being wisely spent by The Rotary Club of Belgaum.
They are certainly a BIG PART of the reason
that SCAW can continue to be "THE 100% CHARITY".
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