Brent Gingerich, the third generation of the Schlegel-Gingerich clan to helm the PeopleCare Inc. family of long-term care facilities, remembers travelling after high school with a friend in south and southeast Asia.
In Bangladesh, the two volunteered for a month in an orphanage, the same one his friend had lived in before he was adopted by Canadian parents. The experience was life-changing for Gingerich
“Every Canadian should travel to a different country and see how half of the world lives, both to appreciate what we have, and work to help the world,” he says.
Now, as CEO of the family business, he is paying the salaries of a number of his employees who are going to Ghana in September for two weeks to see how a Mennonite Economic Development Association (MEDA) project is helping women there. In the meantime, the employees in the various homes in Cambridge, Delhi, Stratford, Kitchener, Tavistock and London, Ont., are raising funds for the Ghana GROWS (Greater Rural Opportunities for Women) project.
Since the employees are paying for their own trips, all funds raised are going to the project. At a fundraiser in Kitchener, they had met their goal of $25,000 and had high hopes for significantly more to be raised at subsequent events. Suppliers and services volunteered items for the silent auction, food and drink. Bands and singers supplied music, and staff volunteered throughout the afternoon and evening.
Gingerich and his parents, O’Derald and Mary, marvelled at the level of support, even from homes which were not sending anyone on the trip.
Ghana GROWS aims to help 20,000 women grow soy beans, learning over the next six years to farm, process the beans into a paste/milk to improve family nutrition, and to market surplus beans. With matching government funds, monies raised by PeopleCare staff will be multiplied nine times.
Ghana GROWS is a great project for the long-term facilities’ staff to support, says Elaine Shantz, chief operating officer of PeopleCare and a former board member of MEDA Waterloo, since so many of the staff are female.
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