Rock Air Force Base, AR in early September. The 120-pound educational kits contained three days of lessons and supplies for a teacher and 80 children. It comes with basic school supplies; exercise books, pencils, erasers and scissors as well as a wooden teaching clock, plastic counting cubes, laminated posters for alphabet, multiplication and numbers tables. The locked box lid can double as a blackboard when coated with paint included in the kit. Recreational kits weigh somewhat less and included balls for team sports found useful for youth trauma therapy

The day before arrival, David Gill, director of the Ferncliff Presbyterian Camp and Conference Center in Little Rock was notified the UNICEF kits were on their way to the Little Rock Air Force Base, the only port of entry for all foreign aid shipments. “The initial plan was to unload the plane and ship the kits to Maryland for distribution even though many of the kits were bound for the hurricane affected area just south of us,” says Gill.

Quickly thinking of warehousing availability in the area so that the kits could get to the children as soon as possible, Gill called on fellow Presbyterian, Ted Belden of Jacksonville, AR, owner of Lomanco, a company that makes attic ventilation products. Immediately Belden and his employees made warehouse space available just two miles from the Little Rock Air Force Base.

UNICEF staff members were on hand to see the 942 kits delivered and then 150 of those immediately dispatched to Meridian, Mississippi, via UPS — but it wasn’t that easy. “At first we didn’t know where the UPS truck was and then some of the pallets had to be reassembled to make up the shipment to Meridian,” says Gill. Dick Brannan, a volunteer at Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center and former airfreight executive, assisted Gill at the warehouse.