GUEST SPEAKER ANTON VAN DOORNICK

 

The Chair Tony Austin introduced guest speaker Anton Van Doornik OAM.

Anton is a member of the Geelong Rotary Club. In 2000 he joined a humanitarian team to East Timor (Dilhi) to work on the hospital out patients department. In 2001 he led a team to Bacau and worked putting a roof on a house using the steel mill being developed by Melbourne Rotary Clubs.

A few years later he went to Mt Margaret's hospital in Oro Bay and worked there with different teams over the next 3 years, renovating the hospital buildings, installing a new generator, water tank and pipeline.

In 2008, after cyclone Guba, he went on an inspection trip to Sariri to see if anything could be done to assist there. This led to about 5 team visits including this year when Tony Austin was part of it.

Donations in Kind has been going for 14 years and for the past 10 years Anton has been managing the depot in Geelong.

Donations in Kind works under the auspices of Rotary Australia. It actively accesses material goods that are surplus to requirements in Australia. It collects, sorts, packs and dispatches material to areas in need overseas. It actively liaises with those countries to understand and address those needs.

Goods are dispatched from Geelong in 20-40 ft containers. During the last Rotary year, 200 shipments were sent to PNG, Vanuatu,, Tonga, Solomons, Fiji, Samoa, Tivalu, Sri Lanka and Mombasa.

Items dispatched are those which are easily shipped and will help in the day-to-day lives of those in need, i.e. basic hospital equipment surplus to needs here, sporting equipment, good clothes and shoes, computers, VCRs, crockery, cutlery, saucepans, etc, educational books, particularly primary school level, along with paperback novels and school supplies in general such as pencils, rulers.

Sariri Village: For the past 4 years DIK has been supporting the re-establishment of this village, which was destroyed by cyclone Guba in 2007. They have been able to send a sawmill, a 4 wheel drive vehicle, clothing, building materials for houses as well as a school and much more.

Other achievements:

  • Almost 300-20 and 40 ft containers shipped
  • 4 vehicles
  • 2 boats
  • Over 500 hospital beds
  • 3 tonne of seed potatoes
  • 100's school desks and chairs and supplies
  • 100's of computers
  • One mammogram machine, several X ray machines
  • 2 mobile dental surgeries
  • Huge amount of clothing, crockery ets

Anton showed everyone some great photos of the Donations in Kind operation, from collection and packing of items, to the shipping process, and then the unpacking and transport process at the other end. This is a huge operation which costs $70,000 per annum to operate and send containers away. They average sending 1 container every 2 weeks, depending on what goes into them.

They have been fortunate in the number of volunteers turning up every week and are grateful for the support from Rotary Clubs in the District - without which they could not operate.