Vancouver 2008

West Vancouver Indian Dinner

August 8, 2008

A HAVE fund-raiser was held at St. Monica’s Anglican Church in West Vancouver, Britiish Columbia on Friday, August 8th, 2008.

The dinner was an outstanding success. HAVE supporters David Phillips, Elizabeth Ferguson, Sue Hanby, Judy Phillips, Ed and Liz Byrd, Kathleen Symons and an army of dedicated volunteers all turned in such a terrific effort; it’s no surprise the results were correspondingly impressive.

The church was packed – there were about 90 guests, and lots of lovely money was raised for HAVE from the dinner, prize draw and silent auction. The East Indian food was delicious and plentiful. Ten salmon were donated for the dinner by two women from the Squamish Indian band – truly communities serving communities serving communities!

A wonderful gift from Reva Vase and Neelamjit Dhillon was the tabla and sitar music that set the mood for the food and festivities.

Among our guests were West Vancouver District Mayor, Pamela Goldsmith-Jones and former Federal Conservative MP for Capilano and Minister for Health, Mary Collins.

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John Bannister, the irrepressible, was perfect for the role of MC, taking charge of the unruly Church crowd with his sonorous Shakespearian voice. It would have perfect except that he insisted in carrying these flowers because they matched his shirt. (Sorry, John, I couldn’t resist – you know we all love you!)

Liz Byrd and Mary Collins ran the draw for some very impressive donated prizes while in the background throughout the evening, the silent auction was generating great interest in the donated items.

The dinner invitation included the following brief reminder about the work that HAVE does:

“HAVE (Help a Village Effort) was started in 1982 in response to a hitchhiker’s trip to India in which he noticed the lack of clean drinking water. For a relatively small amount of money, about $2500, it is possible to drill a well encased in a steel tube and provide a handpump on a concrete platform.

One well in a village of 100 people will eliminate water born disease and free the women for more productive work. It has been the women’s job to carry jugs of water from whatever source available – whether creek or surface well several kilometers away and usually polluted.

HAVE is a registered Canadian charity & receives matching government grants. HAVE is staffed by volunteers with the exception of our auditor who is paid. We used to say that our main administrative expense was for the stamps to mail out receipts for donations & now we are trying to eliminate that by encouraging email receipts when possible.

To date HAVE has funded over 700 wells. ”

There was over $24,000 raised when the CIDA matching grants were factored in. That means 12 new wells in 12 villages over 12 years, helping about 7,200 people with safe drinking water.

Not bad for a single evening!

Story and photos – John Whalen