Contributor – Frank O’Brien
We had a great roll up to help out at our biannual working bee at DIK on Saturday 22 October 2022 at its large warehouse in West Footscray. In fact we had 15 Club Members and one partner, Pauline O’B. It almost goes without saying that we achieved a lot. There were 2 main tasks to complete:
1. Opening boxes of all shapes and sizes,, checking, counting and uniformly reboxing donated linen ie sheets of all sizes, pillow cases, towels, doonas etc. This amounted to 67 boxes which took up 3 pallets. Some will be headed for flood relief victims around the Maribyrnong River and much will be withheld until further requests for assistance arrive.
2. Locating school desks and chairs from within the warehouse and delivering and stacking them inside a 40foot container on site which needs to be completely filled on Tuesday, 25 October before being transported to East Timor. Let me know if you can help. Over morning tea (yes, we needed a break), Bob Glindeman who is well known to us as Head of DIK Operations, spoke about the increasing level of activity at DIK post Covid, the growing no of requests for support from African countries, the increasing cost of shipping (can be as much as $25k) and how grateful he and his Deputy, Laurie Fisher, are for our continuing support.
DIK has just issued a news bulletin of their recent activities including assisting Ukraine (see separate story) which they hope will become a regular publication.
Thanks to all those who helped out and did a great job last Saturday.
