“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth” – Muhammad Ali.
There are no truer words. I can’t believe it’s been 13yrs since my first collection drive. After 13yrs, thousands of dollars, dozens of men, women and children helped, and thrill of mobilizing resources to help others only gets better each time.
Christmas 2019 was my first drive after a 4yr hiatus. Little did I know that the need in 2020 would be astronomical! COVID-19 changed everything. I need your help. If you’ve heard it once you’ve heard it a thousand times, but most of us have never seen anything like this. With your help, no matter the size, I can distribute care packages again this Christmas.
I had the poster designed with just etransfer because I’m in Canada and that’s the easiest way for anyone in Canada who would much rather just donate the money and let me buy the items. Then I started getting messages from people outside of Canada who would like to contribute. Then I figured, why not create a gofundme page? And now here we are!
Every dollar donated is used towards the barrels. In addition to filling the barrels with much needed supplies such as non-perishable food items, personal hygiene products, toiletries, over the counter drugs and household cleaning supplies there are quite a few other expenses like collection of the barrels by the shipping company (yes, believe it or no that’s a separate charge), shipping, customs and storage in Jamaica, transportation and distribution.
It’s not lost on me that for every legitimate campaign there are probably hundreds of scams out there. But, I have been doing this for a longgg time lol, since 2007 to be exact. http://old.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090202/flair/flair9.html That’s just one article I could find from 2009.
This is a picture (terrible pic of me) of the first collection drive I organized way back in 2007. A family of 4 women and 13 children (if my memory serves me well) lost everything to fire except a mattress. I had already started the drive with no recipient in mind and someone heard about it and contacted me. Thy told me of the story and the rest was history.
In 2011 I help secure funds from the Walker’s Place of Safety in Kingston Jamaica, which housed children who were wards of the state. I was able to get a donation of about US$3,500. That money was combined with other fundraisers and we were able to buy some much needed items for the home.
This was from the 2019 collection drive. By the end I managed to bring the total number of barrels up to 9! Im still so grateful to all who helped me last year.
Fast forward to 2020 and another article was written about the work that I do and I couldn’t be more grateful. https://successlifestylemagazine.com/2020/10/23/a-man-on-a-mission-to-help-those-less-fortunate/.
I could go on. However, my focus is now on 2020. Wherever you are, I’m sure you have seen the fallout from the corona virus. My aim is to top last year’s haul and I have until November 17, 2020. The shipping company will pick up the barrels on Wednesday, November 18, 2020 in time to meet the shipping deadline to collect them in Jamaica this Christmas. I know 10 sounds like a lot, but the truth is it sounded like a whole lot last year but my goal last year was to ship two barrel…lol, I know, two. With your help I know we can do it!
Thank you for your support! – Kareem Constantine
