Sending containers

SENDING A CONTAINER OVERSEAS

Illustrated process of sending containers overseas
Example of receiving a MWA container in Tanzania
A year in the life of MWA - Annual Report of 2007/08
Statistics of containers sent 1992 - 2009

Illustrated process of sending containers overseas

Sending containers of aid from Australia to recipients in countries overseas involves the combined efforts of many people, the generousity of our financial donors, the provision of goods suitable for sending, and the prayers upholding the work by mant of our supporters. Here we trace the steps involved in sending a container of aid overseas. We have produced a 45 minute DVD of how to send containers and this is available from us.

Collecting goods from schools, hospitals, elderly citizens homes, businesses, service clubs and from the public who deliver goods to us at the Mission Shed.

Assembling goods from an old folks home	Loading Hugh's truck with chairs	Hugh's truck laden with chairs
Malcolm and Graham with a load of beds	Truckload of bales of compressed clothes	Gael & Louis with bags of linen
Goods are frequently delivered by the public	Peter's truck with a load of beds	Stacking the hospital beds stored ready for sending

After goods are delivered to the Mission Shed there follows extensive sorting and packing into boxes, cases, and bales for compressing.

Joan sorting & packing	Sorting out the clothes	Bob sorting & packing
Helen and Christine packing clothes	John filling bales of clothes	Barbara and Barbar sorting clothes
Overview of sorting area	Ordered chaos	Alan checks the computers for sending

The Mission Shed has storerooms of books and these are sorted.

Brian and Trevor sorting books in the storerooms

Bales taken to Wooldumpers uncompressed

Bales returned half their size

Unloading the container is a tricky business requiring lots of skill by the driver.

Delivering the container

Watching the unloading from a safe distance

The container unloaded

On the day that a container is packed, goods are assembled outside ready for inventorying and packing.

Packing the container is an art and a science. The aim is to occupy every cubic centimetre with goods. No space is wasted.

Bales of compressed clothes	MWA Board Chairman Anthony Moore on right, expert packer	John with a squezy pack!
The art of packing	Joan filling every space	Packing 8 hospital beds vertically
The forklift helps cut the workload	Ordered chaos!	Packing is a hive of activity
8 vertically packed beds & mattresses	Beds packed out to fill spaces	Cots packed with woollen clothes
MWA truck	Pat with packed chairs - spaces filled	Packed mattresses
Ambulance being packed for Uganda	Backing the ambulance into the container	Pushing the ambulance in the last bit
Tables arranged as a box	Chairs packed with goods	Beds stuffed with goods
Forklifting heavy equipment into container	Gael - Aid Administrator extraordinare!	The teddy bear is the final item
A simple sign is fixed to the door - Israel	Uganda	Sign in Vietnamese