Random Acts of Kindness

One of my favourite books about Italy is not what you would expect. Far from the glossy coffee table publications that show us the shiny veneer of cobbled streets winding through Medieval towns, towering Renaissance Cathedrals or pink and yellow seaside villages tumbling down a hillside into the Mediterranean, The dark heart of Italy by Tobias Jones digs beneath the surface to reveal a far more disturbing picture of political polarization, endemic corruption and the cosy stranglehold of the Casa Nostra and the Catholic Church. It is a must read for anyone who wants to truly understand what they are seeing when they visit this complex land.

Most people travel with their ‘eyes wide shut’ so I admire people who dig behind the scenes when they travel – the only drawback is that you may not always like what you see. My tale today is about three such pilgrims who not only travel off the beaten path, didn’t like what they saw, but returned to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!  

For Dr. John and Nina Cassils, the journey began over 10 years ago while visiting some of their favorite destinations in Asia, mainly Cambodia, Myanmar and rural Thailand, not as tourists but as explorers and adventurers penetrating so deep into the heartland that they encountered villages that had not seen Westerners since WW11. They fell in love with the land, they fell in love with the people. It began with a random act of kindness.

On one of their travels they came across 2 young children who were sick. Trained as a doctor, John recognized that they were dying. He took them to hospital immediately, paid for their medical treatment for a month and they survived.

From then on they have always travelled with bags of medicine, gifts of books (bi-lingual dictionaries) and donations of vitamins. Their philanthropy expanded in an adhoc way. They saw a need, they filled it.

Occasionally they supported local charities with cash donations designated for specific purposes but generally their contributions were direct and tangible, like building a thatch house for a homeless family, stocking a library with books in local languages, directly paying the annual salaries of teachers, paying to train 20 young women as nurses, providing wells of clean water, painting hospitals and hauling donations like computers in their luggage. Over the years they have purchased everything from mattresses and canoes to ultra-sound and X-ray machines.

While the Cassils’ have never kept track of their spending, they estimate a figure in the range of $500,000 over a ten year period. Why have they done it? “It’s FUN” bubbles Nina, a force of nature, “the gratification is SO immediate, it’s addictive.”

It’s not only addictive it’s contagious. Their enthusiasm and commitment has infected many of their friends and associates so that 3 years ago, with friends Sue and Wieland Wettstein, they formalized their work under the Cassils Wettstein Asia Fund (visit www.cwasiafund.org) in oder to be able to provide tax receipts for the increasing number of donations they were receiving. Since then over $4.5 million has been raised and used to help build childrens shelters, orphanages, hospital,schools and libraries and to fund community development, health and education initiatives as well as provide refeif for the victims of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar. 

In this village 185 of the 187 houses were destroyed by the cyclone and a horrifying number of children died. Nina tells that the villagers had cut down all the mangrove forests along the rivers edge to make room for rice farming and village expansion. Now they realize the removal of the mangrove forest left them exposed to the natural disasters of the region as the mangrove forest acts as a break and reduces the impact and severity of the water surges.  Now they are replanting the mangrove trees.

This map from their webpage gives an indication of the extent of their projects and involvement in the region. While their scope has expanded with increased funds their methods have remained the same. “Grass roots” says Nina, “thats how we like to be.” Having built a network of trusted friends and partners throughout the region, as well as donors back home, their fund is able to circumvent the cumbersome bureaucracies and occasional corruption that plagues the “Charity business”. Every dollar reaches its destination. That “destination” has been the impoverished children of rural south east Asia. For donations to the Cassils Wettstein Fund go to http://www.cwasiafund.org/contribute.php