Many of the villages in the remote islands are in need of basic supplies like food, medical, clothing, tools, fishing gear, and school supplies. So, we always try to stock up before heading out to these items to bring them much needed supplies and donations.
We are lucky enough to be a part of the Pacific Rally again this year. It brings loads of benefits to us as cruisers crossing the Pacific. One of the benefits is having access to organizations who want to donate items to the remote islands but don’t have any means to get the supplies out to the locals. So, they team up with the cruisers who collect the donations and distribute them to the islands along the way.
Glasses
The Papakura Lions Club is an amazing organization that collects glasses. They receive between 350-500 glasses each month. Every Wednesday a group of volunteers led by Kevin sort the glasses.
First they, sort damaged or broken glasses into large flour bags to be trashed, then they sort sunnies (sun glasses) into their own bin and lastly they sort eye glasses. This is a photo of one of their two rooms dedicated to just glasses!
The yellow boxes are new donations, the white “Cotene” bags are discarded or broken glasses, the red and blue crates need to be sorted. The eye glasses are first cleaned, then dried. Next they measure the strength of the prescription and ensure that both lenses are the same strength. Next they put them in little plastic bags and mark them with a label showing their prescription strength.
I originally signed up to take 25 eye glasses. After I emailed with Kevin he assured me he could give me more so I decided to take 50 eye glasses (25 for Vanuatu and 25 for Solomons). But when I got to the facility and saw how many they had in stock, I left with a box of 350 eye glasses and 400 sunnies.
The sunglasses had to be cleaned and sorted into prescription and non-prescription and then they are all ready to go!
Clothing
The Pacific Rally received over 20 large pillow cases of clothes. They were then distributed to the boats to distribute. I volunteered to take 2 bags. One bag has 35 adult women’s items and one has 50 baby items.
Medical and School Supplies
A local heard asked us to bring their donations of medical supplies and children’s books. We had lots of extra medical supplies and some supplies that were expired so I added it to our pile of donated goods.
Fun Stuff for Kids
I purchased a lot of goodies before I accumulated the eyeglasses, sunnies, clothing, and medical supplies. Not to worry as I am sure we will find lots of children excited to be on the receiving end. We had lots of school supplies, goggles, and stickers, planes, jewelry, etc…. I can’t wait to hand these out!
Our blogs run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events. This blog occurred around mid-May. In our last blog post we share how we provision for 6-months at sea.
