By Patricia Pegorer | Director - AFADU
There are just some people out there that are purely, modestly and consistently generous with their time and money when it comes to AFADU…. I could be describing all of our volunteers and supporters actually.
There’s one chap, though, that kind of stands out in my mind. He has opened up the doors to his fabric warehouse for as many years as I can remember. It’s Bernie from Caesar Textiles in Marrickville. Bernie, if you’re reading this, just know that we think you’re the BEST. At least once maybe twice a year we call up Bernie and say ‘Hey! How bout it? Anything to donate?’. Without a fuss he obliges. His only concern being that we’d be OK to come and pick up the stuff! Heck yeh, Bernie!
So we head out to Marrickville making sure we have a truck ‘big enough’ as instructed by Bernie, and we collect…and not just metres here and metres there. I’m talking about rolls upon rolls upon rolls. When the Batsirani Sewing Group first kicked off in 2005, we went to Bernie and asked for some fabrics that the woman could use to make school uniforms.
Since that he’s opened up his warehouse doors to us countless times. I just rang Bernie today to ‘hit him up’ for more fabrics and told him how well BSG is doing and, can he help! Genuinely interested and not in any way being fanatical about it, he’s says… ‘Sure. Id rather it go to good use that not.’ Then he says, ‘Actually, would they be interested in stuff like office furniture, filing cabinets etc?’. When I tell him that they are about to embark on building a factory and show room and that office furniture would come in handy, he modestly replies ‘well that’s great then!’….and we go on to have a chat about the state of the world and the financial crisis and its effect on trade….as if that fact that he has potentially decked out the office for the new BSG building and supplied a good chunk of fabric that would last at least 6months is not a big deal. What financial crisis?? I’m keen to ask him!
Modest in every way this man, I’m not actually quite sure he really knows how much of a difference he is making. Bernie, we think you’re tops!
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
