Container Makes Way From Scotland to Haiti
A Varied Team Working Together Make Possible Another Much Needed Delivery of Educational Resources
On Tuesday 30/05/2017 a 40 foot 0cean freight container was loaded onto a trailer that the been parked outside the former Surplus Educational Supplies Foundation, SCO39331, Unit 12 of the West Shore Business Centre, Shore Road, Granton,Edinburgh EH51QT since Monday27/ 03/2017. It was collected by Duncan Adams Transport Ltd, and it was delivered to the Port of Grangemouth on Wednesday afternoon 31/05/2017.
Donated List of Educational Supplies May 2017
There in Granton, over the ensuing weeks, the container was loaded with a cargo of educational resources and refurbished bicycles by Brake The Cycle’s Team www.edinburgh.gov.uk/brakethecycle.
On Tuesday 08/06/2017 the container will be loaded on to the Hapag Lloyd container ship the AldebaranJ. The ship will leave later from Antwerp on Wednesday 21/06/2017 for Port of Everglades Florida,USA, scheduled to arrive on Sunday 02/07/2017. At this port it will be transshipped aboard a Crowley Inc. shipping line vessel and delivered to Port au Prince, Republic of Haiti. These bare facts involved in the logistics of the recent trans Atlantic shipment of aid to Dame Marie,South West Region of The Republic of Haiti only tell part of a story that would take many pages of several books to relate.
HELLO EVERYONE. LINDA HERE, THE GAL YOU ARE SENDING THE CONTAINER TO IN HAITI FOR MY SCHOOL. I’M WRITING THIS ON THE PLANE TO PORT AU PRINCE. I’M BUBBLING OVER WITH JOY, TEARS AND GRATITUDE RIGHT NOW FOR EVERYONE’S TEAMWORK AND HARD WORK. I WISH I COULD EXPRESS TO YOU WHAT THIS MEANS TO ME, THE ENORMITY OF THE TASK WAS SO OVERWHELMING FOR ME BUT THE NEED SO GREAT AND YOU HAVE ALL COME THROUGH FOR OUR KIDS WHO NOT ONLY HAD THEIR SCHOOL DESTROYED BY HURRICANE MATTHEW IN OCTOBER BUT ALSO THEIR HOMES AND MANY OF THEIR PARENTS THEIR LIVELIHOOD. HOPEFULLY, ONE DAY YOU CAN ALL MAKE THE JOURNEY AND SEE THE LOVE AND JOY IN THE CHILDREN’S EYES THAT I SEE. BLESS YOU ALL.
LINDA BROOKS
First I shall outline a little back ground. For the past thirteen years I have attempted, at great personal cost, to salvage some of the large quantity of fit for purposes educational resources that Scottish Local Authorities have chosen to transport, at rate payers expense, to land fill sites.
Thanks to Edinburgh City Council who loaned me the use of a derelict industrial unit, whose roof at my own expense I had repaired, I was able to store many more resources that I was able to acquire. From the site in Granton another Charity; Edinburgh Direct Aid, were able to acquire resources for a large Syrian Refugee Camp school in the Lebanon.
This recent shipment to the Republic of Haiti post the 2010 Earthquake and Hurricane Matthew in 2016 came about in an indirect manner.
Last year in July, I was able to return to my home Island of Barbados, West Indies. My cousin invited myself and Family for lunch. His daughter, in the midst of gathered relations, asked me what I intended to do now with my time, given that the Surplus Educational Supplies Foundation: a Scottish Registered charity SCO39331 for the past nine years had been dissolved.
I replied that I hoped one day to go to The Republic of Haiti and build a school. I had just spent a year On the SQA, NPA Plumbing and Construction Course at West College Scotland Paisley Campus and two year prior on SQA Access To Construction Skills Course at Argyll College in Rothesay Isle of Bute.
Need less to say my reply to my Young cousin’s question was met with no little incredulity by the Family. However my host came to the rescue and told me that a friend of his made regular trips to Haiti with containers of aid to the survivors of the Earthquake in 2010 and offered to introduce me to him. As they say the rest is history. One event leads to another, and failure does not mean the end of a dream.
I knew that the overweening ambition that I expressed then though way beyond my means or capacity to fulfill was not the end; for I could not have anticipated then where it has lead to.
On my return Scotland the fact that there still was, a large quantity of educational resources in Unit 12 that had to be distributed to deserving beneficiaries in a manner that would warrant the trouble and peronal cost to salvage them weighed heavily on my mind. One day I got back in contact with someone whose teams had enabled me to salvage library books from The Morningside and MacDonal Libraries in Edinburgh.
He suggested that one of his teams could assist me in the inventory of salvage resources and possibly load them should I get the opportunity to make another shipment.
During month of February I learned about a Canadian couple who had had their home in Dame Marie destroyed by Hurricane Matthew. This couple along with other Teams are engaged in rebuilding a school in that community.
Three groups with different agendas have come together and along with individuals in the corporate transportation collaborated to make this shipment of Container TDRU8229551 possible. Time will prove how valuable this shipment was to its recipients.
David Miles-Hanschell