A Williams Lake couple are holding a fundraising dinner and auction for a children’s home in Indonesia that has been heavily damaged by earthquakes.
Volunteers Terry Hathaway and her husband Jim have been passionately involved with the children’s home since 2004.
“Starting at the end of July this year there were hundreds and hundreds of earthquakes for about two months. They’ve started to calm down now and the children are back to school after being away for over a month but there’s just devastation on the island because of the earthquakes and we would like to go back and be able to support some of the families of these children that have lost everything,” she says.
“The children during the earthquakes were living out in the driveway sleeping under tarps and now it’s the rainy season so a lot of families are under tents and tarps.”
Terry adds they also hope to be able to fix the children’s home that while didn’t get demolished sustained structural damage.
She says it’s estimated that the damage to the school is about $5,000 Cdn. and that they’re hoping to raise $10,000.
“Last year our dinner raised $8,000 and we were very, very pleased with that and it finished off all of the building of the training centre,” Terry says.
“This way if we can raise $10,000 the roof would be fixed and the structural damage to some of the other rooms can be fixed as well, and maybe we can also provide them with an emergency earthquake tent and kit so they could be better prepared in the future if it happens again.”
Tickets for Saturday’s event taking place at the Calvary Church are $15 each and can be purchased by contacting Terry at 250-398-9180.
“In January of 2019, Jim and I are going to return to Lombok and we’re going to assist in any way that we can,” she says.
“Part of the rebuilding is not always the physical the rebuilding of buildings but rebuilding lives and restoring. A lot of the children are traumatized because of this earthquakes-there was one child who had to be hospitalized because of the trauma.”