NYK has provided free ocean transport from Japan for 450 reconditioned bicycles to developing countries, including Afghanistan, Cambodia and Sri Lanka, mainly to assist birth attendants, community health workers and doctors.
This brings the total number of reconditioned bicycles that NYK has shipped for free since 2000, as part of the programme, to 30,424.
The Municipal Coordinating Committee for Overseas Bicycle Assistance (MCCOBA), organised by local municipalities and the Japanese Organisation for International Cooperation in Family Planning (JOICFP), collects and reconditions abandoned bicycles and then donates them to healthcare providers in developing countries, where often roads are unpaved and health facilities are not easily accessible.
In addition, free ocean transport was provided in June for 16,722 used school backpacks that were shipped to Afghanistan from Japan as part of a JOICFP programme to provide Afghan children with needed school supplies. NYK has now borne the cost of the shipment of 105,929 school backpacks since 2004.
The used school backpacks are collected from all over Japan, inspected and packed by volunteers, and then shipped by container. The port-to-port trip to Afghanistan takes about three weeks, and is followed by several weeks of trucking.
Afghan schoolchildren must often walk over 10 kilometres each way along steep mountain paths in order to attend open-air schools. By carrying textbooks and notebooks in school backpacks, they can safely walk along mountain paths that can often be rather dangerous, said a NYK statement.
Moreover, before this programme parents often saw their children solely as labourers. However, after their children began using these backpacks to commute long distances to school, parents began to become more aware of the desire and benefit of education. School backpacks are now a symbol among Afghans of the importance of basic education.
CONTAINER
07 December 2012 - 19:28
NYK moves bikes to health workers...
NYK has provided free ocean transport from Japan for 450 reconditioned bicycles to developing countries, including Afghanistan, Cambodia and Sri Lanka,
CONTAINER
07 December 2012 - 19:28
NYK moves bikes to health workers, backpacks to school kids in poor nations
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