A RETIRED teacher is appealing for more help in his one-man mission to send container loads of unwanted school materials to the developing world.
David Hanschell, 71, from Bute, says his initiative in setting up the Surplus Educational Supplies Foundation (SESF) charity, which rescues books and other materials otherwise bound for landfill, took off after being highlighted by The Herald five years ago.
But this year he has been trying to find a home for a shipment stranded at Greenock by the Ebola crisis.
Last week he struck a provisional agreement with authorities in Jamaica, and a shipping line has offered him free freight to the US, but Mr Hanschell now has to get his 40ft container from Greenock to London, and from New York to Jamaica.
He said: "Clydeport Greenock has since 2012 been absolutely wonderful in allowing me to load and store containers at their port free of charge. Last year I had intended to take one of my containers out to Freetown, Sierra Leone ... however, due to the Ebola outbreak that door of opportunity shut."
The invitation came after Sierra Leone's High Commissioner attended a conference at Glasgow Caledonian University and visited Mr Hanschell's book store in Greenock.
Mr Hanschell said The Herald article in July 2009 first revealing his initiative "was read that morning by the UK's ambassador in Costa Rica, who happened to be on holiday in Glasgow". It led to the foundation sending out free materials to schools in central America.
"Since then through ups and downs I have continued to deliver educational resources to schools in Grenada, Tanzania, Ghana, and Liberia," Mr Hanschell said.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article