Shipping items from POLAND to LIBERIA - share your ideas!
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Help Liberia Foundation have collected typewriters, toys and clothes in Poland, and have been offered more.
Unfortunately they do not have the funds to ship these items to Liberia. They are sure that if they can find a solution, many people in Poland would be prepared to donate things to the school.
Please provide your suggestions on how HLF can get these items from Poland to Liberia for free or reduced cost.
Transportation and Shipping expenses will need to be paid. You could continue efforts to raise donations for these expenses, but the wait could be too long to make the effort worthwhile.
Alternately, you could could identify the shipping companies which service Poland and Liberia, either directly or through secondary shippers, and obtain the necessary quotes from them. You could then negotiate with them to identify the least expensive options. You will also need to factor in the cost of transportation for the consignment to reach the port at Poland, and from the port to the village at Liberia.
Simultaneously, you must also gather information about the cost of buying similar stuff locally at Liberia.
A comparison of the transportation and shipping costs, with the costs of buying the stuff locally at Liberia will reveal to you the bigger picture about the economic viability of seeking donations at Poland and transporting and shipping them all the way to Liberia.
In case transportation and shipping donated stuff from Poland is the cheaper option, the next obvious action must be to focus on raising funds for transportation and shipping. By this stage, the precise amount will be known through negotiations with the shippers and transporters. The validity of the offers will also be known, so the duration within which these funds are to be raised will also be very precisely known.
In case it is cheaper to buy the stuff locally, the next logical action must be to use the available funds for procurement from the local region, and abandon the idea of transporting the donated goods all the way from Poland.
Donations from Poland may be pursued only where the donee commits to pay the transportation and shipping expenses also.
Vijai
Hi Vijai
You make some very good points. I agree with you that we need to work out whether shipping stuff from Poland (or anywhere else) is a practical option or not.
Under the task that I closed, Paul wrote :
Paul, as you are in Poland I would recommend that you and your group start to do some organised research there to find out which companies could ship the items and what the likely costs would be. You can then approach them with clear information about the school to see if they will consider giving you discounted or free shipping.
As well as checking out the cost of international shipping, have you also checked to see whether you will have to pay any import taxes when the stuff gets to Liberia? In many countries, registered non-profits can import items without having to pay these charges provided they have clear evidence of where the items are going, but I have no idea if that is the case with Liberia.
Another option may be to create some local publicity, and see whether any shipping companies approach you and offer assistance.
Brussels airline appear to focus their support on Unicef and SOS Childrens Villages http://company.brusselsairlines.com/en_be/corp/our-values/charity.aspx
If you have contacts with either of them , maybe they can also approach on your behalf?
Have you tried talking to people at the head office of your postal system to see if they run any sort of programme to assist charitable groups? If not, give it a try.
Do we have any Polish neighbours who could help Paul with some local research?
We would also be interested to hear from neighbours who have successfully negociated reduced rates to ship between other countries. How did you do this?
Mary
Hello to all,
Many thanks to all of you for your input. Such exchanges can definitely help produce some wonderful results/ideas. It is usually said that two good heads are better than one. So imagine when we have more good heads. :)
We have started seeking information (in Poland) about shipping items from Poland to Africa, generally, and from Poland to Liberia, specifically. We will keep you abreast with any development. Let me point out, though, that people here (based on experience) don't usually reply to such mails immediately (or don't reply at all). So, some patience will be needed to give feedback.
Concerning the idea about getting the items -- for example, sewing machines -- locally, it would be exactly what we would prefer, but because of lack of resources, we are forced to write institutions for these items.
The last time we checked, a Butterfly sewing machine cost $150 in Liberia. If we need 20 pieces altogether,for example, it will amount to $3,000. But we don't have such an amount. Hence, because it is known that there are some organizations that have these items, or have the means of getting them easily, and donating them to other organizations readily, that's why we make our needs known.
And, let's remember, raising money nowadays is not an easy undertaking. If we could easily raise the $3,000 for the 20 sewing machines, we would forget about finding organizations here and there to donate them to us. We would just buy it locally.
People here are willing to donate items, but they are not willing and ready to commit themselves to transporting them to Liberia.
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Paul
Hi Paul
I am pleased to hear you are researching options in Poland, I suspect that is where this one will be solved. As well as looking into shipping companies, are you also looking into possibilities for creating some publicity for HLF there - if you can let more people know about your organisation, and why you need to get things to Lineria, you may be lucky and find some people who are able to assist.
Mary
Hi Mary,
We have done some publicity for HLF in Poland. That's why/how we are getting some of the assistance/support coming to the organization.
However, I would admit that we are not engaged in a massive publicity campaign. I believe we need to do more. I agree with you that if we let more people know about the organization, we may be fortunate to get others to assist.
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Paul
I thought that when a company offers such services, when they remit their taxes this can be deducted. Although they will not be getting any profit from it, its a worthy cause. Why don't we approach them with this notion in mind.
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Brian Rono
Dear All
The following link may be of help-
Email- enquires@ crossroads.org.hk
http://www.crossroads.org
Regards,
Sushmita,
India
Thanks Sushmita.
Your link takes me to the site for the Crossroads Fellowship, a church in the US.
But from the email address you gave, I think you are actually talking about the Crossroads Foundation in Hong Kong?
Their website is http://www.crossroads.org.hk/
I have come across them before (can't remember if I have mentioned them to Paul), and they could be a good contact as they ship containers of all sorts of used items from Hong Kong to projects all over the developing world, and they do not charge for shipping.
I don't think they will be able to help directly with shipping the stuff from Poland to Liberia, but they could be a possible way to get some of the equipment that the school needs. And maybe they coud offer us some advice too.
Hi Brian
I see you are new to Nabuur, so welcome!
I would encourage you to join Buchanan as a neighbour, as that means you will get notifications of all the new posts to the village. You can do this by clicking on the Join button, or on the link in the invite I will send you.
We could be very happy if you join our discussion. I see you are in Kenya, so if you have any experience with schools there we would be interested to hear more as Help Liberia School may be able to learn from that.
You are right that in some countries, companies can get tax benefits if they provide assistance to non-profit organisations, although I have no idea if that is the case in Poland. It is is, then yes it could be a good thing to mentione when approaching companies.
Mary