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Surrey Sikh community rallies
for Haiti
Groups
heading to the island to offer food and support: $1.5-million raised
 Ramandeep Singh
Khaira, a relief volunteer leaving for Haiti, has had trouble
sleeping for the past few nights.
Mr. Khaira, a
29-year-old sales and marketing employee from
Surrey,
B.C., is part of Team Kitsilano - a group of five Sikh volunteers
organized by the Surrey-based Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara Society. The
GNSGS raised $1.5-million for
Haiti in one
week, through three radio campaigns and donations from individual
Metro Vancouver Gurdwaras.
“I'm so
excited!”, said Mr. Khaira. “To have this opportunity - this is just
an amazing thing to be part of this special group.”
Travelling with
Mr. Khaira is Karnail Singh Rai, the senior vice-president of the
GNSGS, Surjit Singh, a chef at Jagga Sweets, an East-Indian food
restaurant in Delta, Sukhwinder Singh a medical graduate, and Jasvir
S. Chattha a board member of the GNSGS.
The team's
primary objective is to distribute food to the Haitian people and
also to assist medical and relief personnel currently on the ground.
The GNSGS's
first relief team of six – Team Jericho – travelled to Haiti to
assist with food distribution. Since their arrival, Team Jericho has
been keeping the local community updated with their activities in
Haiti through daily blog entries at haitiblog.ca. “We have a couple
of hundred readers every day going onto the blog site and it's
increasing by the day,” said Sukhninder Sangha, vice president of
the GNSGS.
 In a Feb. 2 blog
entry, Team Jericho described how they were abandoned by their
security escort, but managed to cope with the chaos and served up
meals until they ran out of food.
Volunteers are
plentiful. “As of today, [we have] 40 people on our waiting list
that want to go down to Haiti,” said Mr. Sangha. “They're all
motivated and they have the spirit and willpower to make a
difference.”
Though Mr.
Khaira believes that his contributions will be limited, this
opportunity was one he could not miss.
“It's not going
to be a major impact but I think it will make a difference in one
way or another at least for the time that we're there, they have
something to eat,” Mr. Khaira said.
Mr. Sangha
explained how the people of Surrey have come together to help out
with the relief efforts by contributing money, food, toys and school
supplies.
“There's not
much that we can do without the help of the local community.”
Mr. Khaira
agreed that people have reacted very passionately. He noted that it
was also important to emphasize that these are long-term relief
efforts.
“From what I
learn [in Haiti], I can come back and tell people how it is and keep
this relief going.”
Teams Kitsilano
and Jericho, both named after Vancouver's beaches, join other Sikh
relief workers organized by the U.S.-based United Sikhs.
10
February 2010
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