Community
24 May, 2024
Aid campaign seeking generous donations
ONE Camperdown business owner has been making a difference in Africa, and is looking for new items to continue helping those in need.
Future Freight’s Michelle Smith is seeking donations of baby clothes and wheelchairs from community members to ship to Botswana in Africa to help those in need.
Mrs Smith said it all began through the business collecting medical equipment from hospitals and sending them up to Melbourne.
“As the hospitals have rung us, we’ve always collected the medical equipment and sent it down to Rotary in Geelong or Melbourne; we’ve done it for over 20 years,” she said.
“Then I happened to get Aggie Luwukya into our office, who is Ugandan.
“One day she was telling me about how awful it was that cancer patients are being treated on the ground or on mattresses because they haven’t got beds for them in the hospital.
“I just said ‘let me think about it – there will be a solution, just let me think about it.”
Mrs Smith then had a conversation with Camperdown Hospital, and was able to start collecting equipment and sending it overseas.
Since then, she has collected a variety of items donated by hospitals and other organisations.
Future Freight has a dedicated space in its warehouse to store and process donations for Botswana.
Mrs Smith said she was thrilled with one recent donation, which ties in with another avenue Future Freight supports.
“Coastal Hearing have donated 450 hearing aids, which is huge – that’s 40 families that will be helped,” she said.
“Two will go to the little deaf boys at the orphanage, and the rest will go to people in need in Botswana.
“We support an orphanage in Uganda, and we’ve got two little deaf boys in there which are beautiful.
“That’s a huge gift. He’s cleaned them, serviced them, organised them – he’s even put in cleaning supplies with the hearing aids, which is a huge donation from him.”
Alongside this donation of hearing aids, Mrs Smith said the Botswana Rotary Club, her primary contact in Botswana, were calling for baby clothes and warm blankets.
“He said winter’s coming in, and they’ve already got babies dying from the cold,” she said.
“I’m asking all of the local people – we need size 0 and 1 baby clothes, and we need warm blankets and wheelchairs.
“Someone might have a wheelchair in their garage or something.
“We need a heap of baby clothes and blankets from anyone that’s got them.”
Mrs Smith is planning on expanding on her work thanks to support from the Terang Rotary Club.
“We’ve been told that we can go to Rotary International and they will match, dollar-for-dollar, for our project,” she said.
“We will sponsor those two little boys for speech therapy.
“They’ll get sponsored because there’s no point giving them hearing aids if you don’t teach them how to speak.
“It’s all coming together. You can’t heal the whole world, but at least we can do our best.”
Donations can be taken to Future Freight at 43 Fergusson Street, Camperdown, or collected by calling Mrs Smith on 5593 3836.
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