At the end of November 2019, I took over a friend’s business that was in distress. He helps people in the Caribbean receive much-needed goods from their families in Europe. This has helped them improve their livelihoods. After taking over we have also decided to use this channel for charity.
His problem is that he got incarcerated due to custom declaration issues when traveling. This meant that containers that were heading to the Caribbean with belongings of dozens of people got stranded and some goods in the storages here in Europe where not being sent to the owners. Early December, we started helping the rightful owners of these belongings to get them back. In January 2019 we learned that there were 3 additional storages that were full of belongings that needed to be shipped.
We have currently spent up to 15000 Euros trying to help. We flew to the Dominican Republic to pay outstanding salaries to people employed and also to pay the lawyer to deal with the legal issues which we hired mid-December 2018 after finding out of the complications. We also got one container that was stranded in November cleared in February 2019. However, even more, complications have arisen along the way:
· there is another container stuck in the Dominican Republic waiting to be cleared
· there is one container stuck in Rotterdam that needs to be shipped off
· we have to load more containers with the goods we salvaged from the three storages which we are now trying to send but need help to solve all of the issues and pay for extra labor done by employees
Many people are desperate and frustrated as you can imagine. We really need to get them their belongings as some of them have been waiting for close to six months. Many depend on these goods for their livelihoods. We also want to be able to use this channel for charity work and at the moment we are stuck too.
Please help us raise 12000 Euros which will bring so much relief and joy to so many families in the Dominican Republic just trying to make ends meet and depend on these belongings.
Anything that you can give would be so gratefully received.
Thank you for reading and for your generosity.
The Zeit 