Many visitors to Cambodia find themselves wanting to give something back to the country, to touch perhaps just one of the lives they encounter.
Glen Schmidt, however, actually helped to save lives—about 1,000 of them.
After business trips to Cambodia in March and April, Schmidt returned to his native Canada and coordinated the largest-single donation ever received by The Cambodia Daily’s Mosquito Net Campaign—$1,670, enough to buy 334 mosquito nets. Since one net can protect up to three people, the generosity of Schmidt and his cohorts could help 1,002 Cambodians living in areas stricken by malaria.
“The motivation behind donating that kind of money—that’s something that’s worthy of praise,” said Dr Seshu Babu, an adviser to the National Malaria Center, which distributes the nets purchased with Mosquito Net Campaign donations. “It’s worthy of emulation by others.”
A consultant for the International Monetary Fund, Schmidt, 52, noticed the Mosquito Net Campaign while reading The Cambodia Daily on a business trip earlier this year. He decided to contribute—a regular practice on his international trips.
“I always believe [that] you help the people in the country that you live in,” Schmidt said late last month. “When I go somewhere, I always like to give something back to where I am.”
Upon his return home to Milton, Ontario, he began e-mailing friends and co-workers about the campaign, with a request for donations from anyone who was interested. At first he said he thought, “If we can get $500, I’ll be happy.”
But the need for mosquito nets—in a country where 492 people died of malaria last year, and thousands more are annually affected by dengue fever and other insect-borne diseases—touched a nerve among many of those Schmidt contacted. Donations ranging from $5 to $100 began pouring in from friends, and friends of those friends around the country, he said.
One woman who responded to the call for cash had a more personal reason for donating. Previously unbeknownst to Schmidt, the woman’s father died of malaria while working in Southeast Asia years earlier, he said.
Thanks to the generosity of that woman and her fellow donors, many such deaths may be prevented in the future. And the money, said malaria center Director Dr Duong Socheat on Wednesday, came just in time.
“Now it’s raining. People need the nets for protection,” he said.
Additional donors not included in last week’s list are: Louise Dundas Matthews, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories; Vicky and Mark Potts, Kitchener, Ontario; Sharon Headley, Cambridge, Ontario; Susan Cohen Schwartzman, Kingston, Ontario; Donna Berzaitis, Ontario; and Sharon Caseys, Ontario. Last week’s story should also have named Glen Schmidt and Teresa MacDonald.
