By Adrian Mack

Maybe they should call her Cyclone Nina. When she sits down for a chat with the Asian Pacific Post at a Kitsilano diner, Nina Cassils’ first act is to start dispensing gifts, like a hand-woven basket from the Rawang community in Burma-Myanmar’s Kachin State, along with a rapid-fire history lesson of the region. All this while simultaneously gushing over the Madonna concert she’d attended with a bunch of girlfriends the night before at BC Place.

The youthful-looking 54 year-old is warm, open, and super-kinetic. She leaps from topic-to-topic without pause, sometimes tripping over her words in the rush to communicate as much information as she can.
When she empties her bag on the table in front of her, it’s a messy snapshot of the work that Cassils and her husband Dr. John Cassils are currently engaged in – along with their friends Susan and Wieland Wettstein – on behalf of their Cassils Wettstein Asia Fund. The Fund has spent the last 10 years improving the lives of indigent children and families in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma-Myanmar, throwing its energies behind libraries, orphanages, schools, hospitals, and other relief efforts.

To date, over $3 million has been raised in direct aid benefiting hundreds – if not thousands – of children and their impoverished families. There’s a handsome spiro-bound booklet produced for potential donors to a pediatric hospital in Angkor, Cambodia – a “ten-year dream,” in Nina’s words. There’s a brochure about the Moo Baa Dek orphanage in Thailand. “We’ve been with them for 10 years,” she says. “There’s about 150 children here and it’s actually become so large it’s its own village. It’s neat.”

Next to that is a two-page breakdown of the 5 For 5 Campaign, which seeks to raise money for the victims of Cyclone Nargis. Burma-Myanmar was battered by the cyclone in May, effecting 2.4 million people and leaving behind an official death toll close to 300,000, including 150,000 children (although experts suggest the death toll is closer to one million). The 5 For 5 Campaign is Nina’s priority at present. But she confesses with a sigh that her first efforts in the wake of Cyclone Nargis damn near killed her, when the CW Asia Fund snapped into immediate action with its ad-hoc Myanmar Relief campaign. “I was working around the clock from May 8, and it wasn’t until August that I took time off,” she says. “Nobody saw me.” She continues, “We raised over $700,000 and the bulk of the money came from 42 people.” “That is so generous,” she exclaims, shaking her head. “We decided to give it to four organizations because we have an eight year working relationship with them already, and we trust them.” CW Asia Fund directed the funds to Save the Children, AZG/Medecins Sans Frontieres Holland, the Metta Development Foundation, and the MFH & Medical Relief Society. “100 per cent of that money went to Myanmar, without any interference,” she states. “It didn’t get hung up. The UN lost tons of money in conversion rates and things, we didn’t. We know how to do it. We did it quietly, and it’s all been accounted for.”

Essentially, the Cassils and Wettsteins have developed a network of trusted friends and partners across the region – along with a community of donors at home, mostly friends and family – in a successful effort to circumvent the larger, more cumbersome organizations that traffic, as Nina says, in the “charity business.”

“We can do that because we know the area,” she explains. “We’re on the ground there.” Furthermore, the CW Asia Fund doesn’t usually solicit money; it acts as advisers, directing funds to scrupulous organizations and projects. “When you’re small, you can react fast,” she says. “And then if there’s an emergency and somebody has to make a decision, they don’t have to go through a bureaucracy, or a board of directors. But there’s a lot of little organizations, and you tell them what you want them to do with your money and they can get back to you within the week.”

“That’s why we started to rethink how we wanted to give our money to charity,” she continues. “I think that’s one of the reasons we get so many phone calls, and people will ask us, ‘Where are you giving your money?’ Or vice versa. I’ll call someone and say, ‘I hear you’re going to Angkor to see the ruins, would you mind taking some medicine over and dropping it off?’” She laughs, “It’s very, very grass roots.” So grass roots, in fact, that the Cassils travel at least twice a year to Southeast Asia, dropping in on their various projects, and re-igniting a love affair with a part of the world the couple first began visiting when they would travel to Hong Kong and Bangkok on behalf of John’s work in real estate. Nina’s drive to help disadvantaged children, meanwhile, is something that also informs her day-job on the board of directors at Vancouver’s Arts Umbrella. So what is it that compels the Cassils, the Wettsteins, and their friends and family to get involved? “People give for so many different reasons,” Nina answers. “They give because they have more than they need, or they’ve grown up in a family of giving and it’s a part of their culture, or they’re born with it. And some people have just learned that it’s a thing they should be doing, and people care.” With that, Cyclone Nina gathers up her things for a Halloween date with her friends. The remnants of some ice cream, herbal tea, and a couple of beers remain. Naturally, she picked up the tab.

On the web: www.cwasiafund.org