Containers full of help

A container full of goods for the under-privilged has arrived in Port Elizabeth from Holland. It is the 100th container to arrive, thanks to the Calabash Trust. The container included toys, tables and chairs, benches, beds, bed linens, mattresses, pots and pans. The donations were collected in the Netherlands by Douwe and Gerry Helfrich. The Dutch couple decided to help Port Elizabeth‘s poor after they joined a Calabash Tours visit to the Port Elizabeth townships in 1999. After their return home taht year, they started collecting donations and in 2000, with the help of Safmarine and Deutsche Afrika Linie, they began shipping containers to South Africa. Sixty-one containers have gone to schools and communities in Port Elizabeth while the remainder have gone, through Calabash, to other needy places in the country and as far afield as Namibia. Douwe (66) is a former financial administrator of a large school in the province of Friesland. Calabash Tours owner and Calabash Trust co-founder Paul Miedema said this shows the power of tourism.