Maryland State Council, Knights of Columbus

Overview - St. Martin's parish in Gaithersburg has a sister parish located in the village of Atchanvé in Togo, Africa. The Togo Mission, led by Fr. William Ryan, was instituted to help with the evangelization, education, health, and growth of this community. Fr. Ryan, a Knight from San Juan Diego Council No. 13463 operating at St. Martin's, moved to Togo in 2006 and returns annually to our area to raise funds and collect needed equipment.

San Juan Diego Council has been helping the Togo Mission for many years to achieve its goals in collecting and shipping items needed. The village was in need of additional equipment and furniture to furnish up to six new school buildings and three new chapels. The Knights provided the necessary manpower to pick-up, store and then load all these materials in a 40 foot container to be sent to Atchanvé. The date to load the container was October 15, 2010.

First Steps - The Knights of San Juan Diego Council, as requested by the Togo Mission Committee, were involved in most of the activities that the Mission required at the time. Fr. Ryan provided the list of items needed to be collected. This list was announced in St. Martin Church bulletin and on its website. In addition, through the committee's president, Mrs. Wanda Canino, the information was sent to other organizations that had helped in the past.

From this list and the contacts made, the Knights organized the collection drive taking many weeks to complete. We formed a committee to coordinate the pick-up, storage, and fill up of the container in an organized manner from our Council. It was composed of the following members: Mariano Calles (GK), Jose Orellana (PGK), Marco Calderon (K), Julio Ruiz (T) and Alexis Martinez (PGK).

Collection Drive - After the distribution of the final list and with the help of Mrs. Wanda Canino, we started making and receiving phone calls. In many of these calls we were also screening the type of items that were to be donated.

As the response rate increased, we made the list of the people and of the items they donated. In addition, we also made a separate list of items to be purchased. After the database of donors was made, we made appointments with different people and organizations to collect these donations and the purchased items.

Pick Up and Storage - Based on the donors database we needed to organize the collection of items. This collection required that we provide the manpower and transportation from the different locations. We requested the assistance of many of our Knights that had medium to large trucks, as well as for the amount of people needed for these tasks.

Initially we stored many of the items on the first floor of Fr. Meyers House, across the street from St. Martin's Church, and in the Priests' residence garage. Many of the large items were stored in the garage. We received donations of furniture from the company MedImmune and stored them in Fr. Meyer's House.

Few items were shipped directly to the Priests' residence garage and soon we ran out of space. We also used the help of the Knight Kevin Ginley, PGK from Montgomery Council, to store few boxes of solar panels and converters in his garage. Other items were stored in Mrs. Wanda Canino's garage.

Brother Knight Marco Calderon was tasked with painting 30 blackboards, using wood and a special paint. These were stored in the Priests' garage.

Packing, Labeling, and Selection - Many of the small items were packed in boxes and Mrs. Wanda Canino was in charge of coordinating this effort. We later helped her to label these boxes. All items, large and small, were labeled and were recorded in the packing list. A few days before the day we pack the container, we needed to organize all the items in a single place. So we reorganized the garage to place more items and we moved few other things from other locations on the morning of Container Day.

On "Container Day", we needed to organize all items in the open area by priority.

Conclusion - This was another well planned and executed project by Council 13463. Our collaboration over several months with the Togo Mission personnel finally paid off. We know our brothers in Togo will really appreciate receiving all the needed items to continue the work that Fr. Ryan started. We are proudly standing by, ready to help on the next container.