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.

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by Colin Hinshelwood

Concierge.com‘s Insider Guide

Last Spring, while Myanmar’s government was refusing foreign aid for the survivors of Cyclone Nargis, local travel companies were among the first to provide relief. When little Ma Pandaw grows up, she can tell her pals she was born on a luxurious cruise ship. She first saw the light of day in its bar, which served as a temporary delivery room after the ship was converted into a mobile hospital to treat victims of the cyclone that swept through Myanmar s Irrawaddy Delta in May.

Ma Pandaw s mother, 17-year-old Khin Mar Oo, named her baby in honor of the ship in which she was born. The Pandaw IV was lent to the cyclone relief effort by Pandaw Cruises, one of dozens of tour companies, hotels, and resorts in Myanmar that responded to the Cyclone Nargis disaster by collecting donations and offering their staff, transportation, expertise, and, in this case, a replica of a nineteenth-century steamboat. We have collected $600,000, mostly from former passengers, said Pandaw Cruises founder Paul Strachan, adding that another $150,000 had been pledged.

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