Click to enlarge

Operating Engineers Raise Funds To Send Bulldozer To Kenya.

Local 793 has successfully raised enough money to purchase a bulldozer and ripper and send them to a humanitarian organization that helps orphaned and neglected street children in Kenya.
A special fund-raising dinner at the union’s banquet hall in Oakville on April 5 garnered $165,000 for the cause.
The equipment will enable the Mully Children’s Family (MCF) foundation, which has five orphanages in the African country, to build water catchment facilities and dams and grow more food.
Caterpillar has agreed to pack the equipment and ship it to Kenya. Crossroads Inc. is paying for the transport.
Business manager Mike Gallagher told those at the fund-raiser that the MCF is a very important and worthwhile organization and Local 793 is glad to be able to lend a helping hand.
The fund-raiser was a giant undertaking, he said, but Local 793, along with other building trades and unionized contractors in Ontario’s construction industry, pulled together to make it a success.
Gallagher also thanked the staff and members of Local 793 who worked hard to get the word out about the fund-raiser, as well as the union for allowing him to give his time to the cause.
The union donated $10,000 to the initiative and the use of the banquet hall.
“Many of you stood with me on a particularly cold and blustery January day when we launched this initiative,” he said. “Your efforts have not gone unnoticed by me.”
He said construction unions have a long record of helping others in need, noting that groups like the Carpenters helped with the rebuilding effort after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, and that the building trades also help raise funds for juvenile diabetes research.
He said others like business manager Jim Tinney of the Boilermakers regularly speak to young people about health and safety, and a number of contractors have been supporting an annual bike ride organized by Princess Margaret Hospital to raise money for breast cancer research.
“All these individuals are motivated by the same thing, the overriding desire to make a difference.”
Local 793 got involved in the fund-raising venture last October after Gallagher and executive members of the union met with Charles Mulli, founder and executive director of the MCF.
Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn arranged the meeting. He had been to Africa and visited the orphanages.
During the visit, Mulli told Flynn that a bulldozer would enable him to make improvements to the orphanages and help more children.
Flynn said he returned to Canada, wondering how he could get a bulldozer. He decided to ask Gallagher and the union for help in raising funds for the equipment. Gallagher said the union was glad to help.
“The MCF story of Charles Mulli and his rags to riches missionary is truly a miraculous one that can only inspire anyone who takes the time to listen to it,” Gallagher said. “The MCF orphanages are a beacon of light and hope in an often dark world of despair.”
Mulli came from a poverty-stricken family in Kenya. He was abandoned at an early age and left to fend for himself by begging on the streets. He eventually grew to be a wealthy man, but then one day decided to sell his holdings and turn his attention to helping street children.
In a speech at the fund-raiser, Mulli told the audience that his organization has helped more than 6,000 children, and another 1,600 are presently in care.
He said the organization works towards eradicating poverty by training and educating youth and reintegrating them into society.
The recent violence in Kenya has left half a million people homeless, he said, and even more children in dire need of help.
Mulli thanked Local 793 for the “kind and generous support” in purchasing the bulldozer and ripper, noting that members of Local 793 and the other construction unions are true friends indeed.
Afterwards, MPP Flynn thanked Gallagher and Local 793 for working tirelessly on the event.
“I am very grateful to all of the individuals, companies, and trade organizations that stepped up to help raise funds for this very worthy cause. The bulldozer fundraiser was a complete success.”
“A bulldozer will make a tremendous difference to the organization’s ability to assist even more needy children.”