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Humanitarian Aid for Libya
15,000 liters of bottled water, loaded for Tripoli & Misurata
September 14th 2011In August 2011, right when everyone who was going on holiday was away, except for the one hundred thousand or so visitors that come to Malta for a bit of sun and sea and some even for history, Malta had found itself already for some months inextricably linked to the goings on in Libya, just 300 or so kilometres to the south. Our Club had just had a visit from two representatives of Rotary Shelter Box, an organisation that delivers to emergency situations all over the world, what appear to be plastic kit-boxes. These are prepared in different executions to help locals survive in desperate situations, packed with tents, sleeping bags, cooking utensils and other necessaries for staying alive.
 Some 500 of these boxes were delivered to Libya, at a time when civilians were fast becoming targets in the rebel uprising against the regime of strongman Muamar Gaddhafi, who had ruled the country with an iron fist for over 40 years.
Rikke Rosenlund, an efficient blonde young lady from Denmark was assisting Rotary Shelter Box in this operation from Malta, while her tough looking colleague, Mark Pearson from Scotland, travelled to Libya to ensure the goods were delivered to the people that needed them. While in Malta, they were involved in delivering some 60 tons of aid to Misurata in Libya, which included some 2,500 school packs.
RCM and RCLV supported them wherever they could in Malta, and also put them into contact with former District Governor Francesco Arezzo, when they visited Sicily.
The Malta Civil Protection department was coordinating the collection of humanitarian aid, and organised a food and water collection in aid of the Libyan people one week end in August.
A number of organisations received an email from Rikke of Rotary Shelter Box explaining what was immediately considered necessary:-
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“As per our discussion at the Rotary meeting on Thursday, I am hereby sending you a list over food required for Misurata during Ramadan. This list was provided to us at a cluster meeting coordinated by the government last week.
Any help you and the other Rotary clubs in district 2110 can provide with obtaining the items on the list (either by a financial contribution or the actual items) would be great.”
This was the list we received:
List of foodstuffs required for Misurata for the month of Ramadan as follows:
1 | Milk (long life) | 1000 | Tons |
2 | Cooking Oil | 700 | Tons |
3 | Dates | 800 | Tons |
4 | Potato | 700 | Tons |
5 | White Sugar | 500 | Tons |
6 | Pasta | 400 | Tons |
7 | Canned (e.g. Green Peas | 250 | Tons |
8 | Fruit Juice | 500 | Tons |
9 | Onion | 300 | Tons |
10 | Instand Yeast | 2.5 | Tons |
11 | Rice | 400 | Tons |
12 | Turkish Coffee | 60 | Tons |
13 | Frozen Meat (Halal) | 400 | Tons |
14 | White Flour | 1000 | Tons |
15 | Soap, Shampoo, washing powder | 100 | Tons |
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Looking at a list of over seven thousand tons of humanitarian aid, we realised there was absolutely no way we could by ourselves make any sort of worthwhile contribution towards the mountain of requirements.
We asked through our membership of organisations that could somehow help with supplying some of these requirements from material already available locally. Others were trying the same at the same time. Making what seemed an impossible task even more difficult.
In the end we called the contact man himself, Mario Debono, the man who founded ‘I-goaid’ who responded with ‘What we really need is water’ which strangely enough was not even on the list. Here was something we could get our hands on straight away and in a very short time had managed to source a supply of mineral water in bottles, at a special rate from Farsons. Whom we would here like to thank, and purchased some 20 pallets totalling 15,000 liters of water. We coordinated the delivery through the Civil Protection Department and were informed where the aid ship Al-Antisar would be berthing and when she would be leaving.
Fortunately we found the vessel, and also Mario, who was managing the whole humanitarian aid project. We watched pallets of food and other supplies being loaded, till eventually our own consignment of water, was delivered, loaded and on its way. A satisfying little job well done.
The story doesn’t stop there, we were fortunate to have received an invitation for a number of Rotarians and their spouses to lunch on board a Silver-Line cruise liner, Silver Spirit, and took advantage of offering this meal to our members and friends as a fund raiser to go towards financing the water delivery as part of Malta’s Humanitarian Aid to the stricken civilians of Misurata and Tripoli.
Some photographs of the actual delivery, ably taken by our hardworking Secretary David DeGiovanni ‘turned photographer for the day’ may be seen on the Club’s website.
RCM’s thanks go to all those who assisted in making this delivery of water to Libya possible.
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