Loading a Container to Guatemala and District 5050 AGM 2023
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Article A BUSY FALL AT UKRAINIAN CANADIAN SOCIAL SERVICES – VANCOUVER
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Container loaded September 25 Sent to Montevideo, Uruguay – Ceremony Unloading January 2022
Ceremony for unloading container
Click here for the video of Rotary World Help’s 400th Container Shipment! Destination: Kiev, Ukraine
Medical and dental equipment arrives in grateful Northern Chile community
The 15,000 residents of Pozo Almonte, a small community in northern Chile, are most grateful for a shipping container load of 284 items of needed medical and dental equipment and supplies sent through Rotary World Help (RWH) in February. RWH is a non-religious, non-political charity run by 45 Rotary clubs mainly in Rotary Districts 5040 and 5050, throughout Metro Vancouver, up the coast to Powell River, Prince George and as far away as Summeride, PEI. The Rotary Club of Ladner was the lead sponsor of this shipment, the 395th shipped to 62 countries on five continents since RWH was founded in 1993.The Rotary Club of Cavancha, in Iquique, Chile, a city of 191,468 near the northern border with Peru and Bolivia, received the shipping container on March 12, 2019.Thanks to a RWH team, which is continually gathering the equipment from hospitals and medical and dental facilities in BC, cataloguing it and preparing it for shipping, and to more than 20 Rotarians from various Lower Mainland clubs who showed up on February 23, 2019 to load the container at a warehouse in Coquitlam, Cavancha Rotary members and the people of Pozo Almonte, 50 km east of Iquique, have been celebrating this valued contribution to that community.This RWH shipment brings the estimated total of people helped to almost 12 million around the world, at a total estimated value of goods shipped of $138 million.
Fishing village’s medical centre receives equipment from Rotary World Help
Posted by Peter Roaf on Nov 20, 2018The newly renovated medical centre in the fishing village of Panglao, on the island of Panglao, Bohol, the Philippines, will receive used medical equipment such as hospital beds, side tables, medicine carts, wheelchairs, emergency beds and cribs for children in a shipping container organized and loaded on November 17, 2018 by Rotary members in Districts 5040 and 5050 in the Greater Vancouver area.
Rotary World Help filling hospitals a world away
http://www.tricitynews.com/news/rotary-world-help-filling-hospitals-a-world-away-1.2256917
The registered non-profit has been shipping used and donated medical equipment and supplies, as well as educational material and school supplies, to developing nations around the world for nearly 20 years.
Sarah Payne / Tri City News
May 17, 2016 02:24 PMDan Gallant never knows what he’s going to get when he picks up the phone.
Whether it’s a hospital with 100 beds to offload, an optometrist with a brand new printer that doesn’t work in her office or a linen company with a stack of sheets and gowns to give away, Gallant takes it all with a smile.
That’s because he knows each and every item he and other Rotary World Help volunteers collect from hospitals, seniors’ homes, doctors’ and dentists’ offices, clinics and individuals will eventually find its way to a community in dire need of medical supplies and equipment.
“We like to think of ourselves as a big recycling project,” said Dan Gallant, a member of Port Moody Rotary and a director on the World Help board, noting the organizations saves the healthcare system from paying cartage or tipping fees, keeps equipment out of landfills and helps those in less fortunate areas around the world.
Shipments are triggered when Rotary World Help receives a humanitarian request from a club in a developing country.
Volunteers arrive at the Riverview warehouse, where stacks of hospital beds and mattresses, wheelchairs, crutches, X-ray machines and baby incubators are surrounded by boxes of medical supplies waiting to be inspected, sorted and repackaged. About once a month the supplies are loaded on to a 40-foot shipping container, destined for communities in developing countries in need of medical and dental equipment.
“When we fill a container there’s no empty space,” said Gallant. “We’re paying good money to ship it and we want to fill it up.”
Containers are sponsored by the 38 B.C. Rotary clubs that are members of the World Help network, either by larger, individual clubs or from contributions from the smaller groups. Others contribute by collecting items throughout the year and sending them down to Coquitlam when they have a trailer full.
Depending on the destination the shipments can range from about $5,000 (Philippines) to more than $12,000 (South Africa), and the receiving club assumes responsibility for clearing the shipment through customs, distributing the supplies and submitting an accountability report.
The operation has come a long way since its inception nearly 25 years ago.
In 1992 a group of Rotarians established a club in Kiev, Ukraine, and during their visit noticed the sparse medical facilities. Upon their return they “scavenged enough supplies” to fill a container for Kiev and “the seed was planted,” Gallant said.
Rotary World Help was officially formed in 1997, and the supplies have arrived steadily ever since.
In fact, the organization is so well known that scavenging for donations is a thing of the past.
“They call us,” said Rotary World Help president Ann Hulbert. And it’s not just for medical supplies — books, school supplies and, recently, several pallets loaded with Canadian dictionaries were received for the group’s humanitarian efforts.
So Gallant’s phone keeps ringing, and he’s happy to keep picking it up to find out what Rotary World Help will get next.
For more information and details on donating, visit www.rotaryworldhelp.com.
spayne@tricitynews.com
BY THE NUMBERS (as of December 2022)
- Containers shipped: 430
- Receiving countries: 61
- Estimated value of goods shipped: $150 million
- People who have benefitted from shipments (30,000 for each shipment): 12.5 million
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