A trip to Serbia

 I just got back from being a volunteer, yes not only do I manage a great group of volunteers, I also am a volunteer for a great organization. Twice a year for a 2-3 week period I volunteer as a response team member for ShelterBox.   

ShelterBox is an humanitarian aid organization based in the UK that responds to people in disasters, both natural and man made.
Whats great about ShelterBox? A lot of things - the training is top notch- we spend 9 days in England learning about the organization, how to make things happen on the ground and then do a 5 day exercise where we put that all to use. The deployments are supported by a great ops team in the UK who not only do operations work (watching out for us & making sure we have what we need) but are on the ground doing what we do a several times a year, the other volunteers I deploy with come from all over the world, the two times I have been out I was the only American; the others are from England, New Zealand, Australia, a great group of people.
  
You get a call from England, they ask if you can deploy (there's a calender we all keep up to date with our availability) and if you say yes, you are off.  This time for me it was to Serbia to respond to flooding.

I landed in Belgrade on a Sunday around noon and by 2 PM I was in the flood zone (Obrenovac,Serbia) working with the local fire department to deploy tents to people who had lost their homes to some of the worst flooding in history.  And it was like that for six days, my Team Lead and our interpreter; up early working with local emergency management in a different city and training the trainers (Fire fighters) then helping them set up tents, check into a new hotel, shower, eat, write reports, sleep, repeat.  And then it was done, same planes going the other way - towards home and back to my "normal" job.

And then I ask myself "did I make a difference?"  And as I look back at the new response team members I met and worked with, the Rotarians who helped us on the ground, the Fire department and Emergency Management people we worked with. 
The mother who told us it took 12 years to build their home and less than a day to lose it in the floods, and then thanked us for the new tent while they rebuild. I have to answer "yes".

And so I wait for my next time on call to put things on hold and go help others who are in need.

disaster_dave