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JUNE 2001 UPDATE:  The 2400-pound shipment of clothing made it all the way to Bosnia and, with the assistance of the Rotary Club of Sarajevo and the humanitarian group, Nasa Djeca ("our children" in Serbo-Croatian), has been distributed.  Four ethnicities (Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat, Bosnian Serb, and Bosnian Gypsy) exist in the region and the shipment was divided equally among needy children and families in each.  

Back during the time the 126^th Med Co was activated and deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina (August 1998 through March 1999), we became aware of the needs of the children of that war-devastated country.

I researched possible ways of getting humanitarian supplies into the region and discovered the Department of Defense and the U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had an arrangement to do just that. Called the Denton Program, it permitted shipment of humanitarian materials via space-available resources on military transportation.

Meanwhile, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, three brand new Rotary Clubs had just been formed in the cities of Sarajevo, Tuzla, and Banja Luka. Each represented the ethnicity in its home region and, in cooperation with our project, formed an alliance to ensure the clothing got distributed equally across ethnic lines. With the active assistance of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Nasa Djeca, the Bosnian humanitarian society for children, they set up five centers across the country to distribute the clothing. This represented a genuinely historic coming-together of these formerly warring groups; our project would be the first American Rotary effort to contribute much-needed humanitarian aid to their new multi-ethnic partnership.

Finally, everything came together after more than fifteen months. Throughout, I’d been working with the "Denton Shop" at Charleston AFB; they’d been helpful beyond description, lending insight and the benefit of their experience, constantly working to ensure the shipment would enter and move through the U. S. Air Force Air Mobility Command’s transportation system as expeditiously as possible. They reported that a flight was available that could get everything to Sarajevo by Christmas if we acted right away.

But expected National Guard help in transporting the clothing from its storage location at Pt. Mugu Naval Air Station to its point of embarkation vanished at the last minute. This resulted in a crisis where, to make it to Bosnia in time, the shipment had to be moved to March Air Reserve Base (ARB) in just two days.

Though delayed for many weeks by political instabilities in the region, the shipment was divided into portions and distributed at several centers set up to assist the most needy families.

I'd like to thank the Rotary Clubs of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo, Banja Luka, and Tuzla) for their assistance as well as the children's humanitarian association, Nasa Djeca, for their help in receiving and distributing everything. 

 But I’d also like to express heartfelt thanks to the members of the 126^th Med Co who helped with the collection and the Rotary Clubs in Southern and Central California who contributed so much material, effort, and space for storage. And none of this would have been possible without the dedicated efforts of active-duty and reserve members of the U. S. Navy and Air Force all along the way; every time help was needed, hands and resources were available to get this project past crisis after crisis. And then there were the Teamsters and their last-minute effort that brought it all together just when it needed to happen.

Speaking as someone who has seen a goodly portion of this planet and observed the sad condition of much of it, I can tell you that, in countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina, there are people who have never known anything but misery, need, corruption, and neglect.  When seemingly out of the blue, someone reaches out to them and shows them that somewhere, somebody cares, it can be an experience they will never forget.  It can change their lives and outlook forever.  Whether we accomplished that with this comparatively tiny project, we'll probably never know.  But I do know that everyone involved--everyone who cared--had their life changed.  This is what community service is all about, whether it's in your hometown or halfway around the world.

See the text of a story in the Bakersfield Californian on 20 December 2000 about the clothing being moved to March ARB and its subsequent departure by clicking here.

More project photos!  (click on the small images to see full-sized ones)

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