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A Little Bit Can Do So Much
Couple’s Quest to Help Kids in South Asia
by Elaine O’Connor
The Province Sunday
“British Columbians without Borders Blog” -Saturday 27 September 2008
Funding the Future in South Asia
Vancouver’s Nina Bains Cassils and her husband John love to travel. But they want to be more than tourists.
That’s why, after visiting developing countries in Asia for more than a decade they decided to add philanthropy to their sightseeing. Inspired by admirable people they met, they began to donate to causes they encountered.
In 1998, they made their first donation to an orphanage in northwest Thailand called Moo Ban Dek. Since then, they’ve traveled to South East Asia every year, for up to six weeks at a time, to visit projects, connect with local charities, distribute funding and check in on the people they have helped. Now they are funding 16 projects through their CW Asia Fund (named after main contributing families, the Cassils and the Wettsteins of Calgary). The Fund partners with local non-governmental organizations in India, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia working on clean water, education, orphanages, health care, youth vocational training and income generation and nutrition.
