By Sheldon Spackman

28th Annual Humanitarian Day Celebration in Lacombe

May 25, 2018 | 9:28 AM

Central Albertans are encouraged to attend a community celebration of achievement taking place in Lacombe this weekend.

A Better World Canada’s 28th Annual Humanitarian Day Celebration will be held at the Lacombe Memorial Centre starting at 4:00 p.m. Saturday, offering an opportunity to acknowledge what has been achieved through the foundation’s efforts and to show appreciation for all the donors and volunteers who have helped make it all happen.

“People have travelled together, get a chance to connect with each other and reminisce a bit about their trips,” says Eric Rajah, A Better World Canada Co-Founder and Director. “The public is welcome, that’s the purpose, to share what we’re doing and if they want to get involved, this would be the perfect place for them to meet and connect with others who are involved.”

Rajah says there are many benefits to getting involved and improving the lives of people in developing countries.

“It includes our community as well, we do projects here, we support people that need help and this will give a chance for the people to work with the grassroots level, the people who live next door to them and the people who are involved in this. So when the money is given, they can travel to see what difference its making.”

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Rajah says A Better World is actively working in seven countries, focusing on five key areas: building schools and clinics, training teachers and medical officers in these countries, building water systems, and creating agriculture projects.

For people looking to get involved with A Better World Canada, Rajah says those who manage projects for example, their minimum commitment would be to travel at least once a year to visit the projects.

“So that’s two weeks and then while they’re here, they’ll probably spend half a day a week managing the projects,” he explains. “So communicating, corresponding with the local people, bringing proposals to me to fund and so on but those people are about a dozen people. Then we have medical doctors who go and train, we have dentists, we have physiotherapists. Most of their work is transferring their skill to a country that doesn’t have the skill.”

Rajah adds there are several new projects on the horizon they’re looking forward to as well, including upcoming trips to Kenya and Rawanda.

“We just figured out we’re going to spend about a million dollars in the next six months building new schools, new clinics and water systems and we are going to be inviting people to join us on our upcoming trip which is going to be in November,” states Rajah. “This is what they call a general trip, any kind of skills people can come, there’s no specific skills needed for this trip. This is monitoring our projects, so we want to encourage them to come on the November trip.”

In addition, Rajah says if they have nurses, dentists, dental hygienists or anyone with skills of some kind, they’ll be looking at a January trip to Rawanda.     

“I want to thank all the people of central Alberta for their support for 28 years, financially and with their resources and skills for making a difference,” concludes Rajah. “It’s a great community to have an organization such as ours benefit from the local people.”