AMSTERDAM–Seeing the images of destruction following Hurricane Irma, Chief Operations Officer (COO) Ludo Campman of the well-known Kwantum stores in the Netherlands and Belgium felt compelled to help.
Campman visited St. Maarten in the early part of 2017 and was instantly struck by the island’s beauty, the atmosphere and hospitality. The images of destruction on Dutch national TV in the days following the hurricane struck him deeply.
“My immediate feeling was that as a true Dutch company that exists 40 years we had to do something,” he told The Daily Herald on Wednesday. “We are together in the Dutch Kingdom and in these urgent situations we have to help each other.”
Campman’s thought was that as life and living stores, Kwantum and its sister company Leen Bakker, which together have more than 270 stores in the Netherlands and Belgium, have a lot of household goods that could assist those people in St. Maarten who lost their furniture. Campman got in touch with the Make St. Maarten Great Again volunteer organisation about making a sizable donation to the island and its people.
“We started gathering goods from our stores. Beds, linen, chairs, tables and closets. We wanted to send household items that people who lost everything could at least restore part of their furniture and sleep in a bed,” said Campman. “We wanted to help from a human point of view, and not as a public relations stunt. That is why we didn’t seek publicity,” he said, noting that the Kwantum and Leen Bakker employees had responded very positively to the action. “People felt proud to contribute to St. Maarten.”
Within two weeks, four 40-foot containers were filled with goods, two each from Kwantum and Leen Bakker. The containers, made freely available by the Dutch transport company GLE, were loaded at the Kwantum and Leen Bakker distribution centres in Tilburg and Raamsdonksveer.
GLE, through the assistance of Jaap van den Heuvel, took care of the transportation within the Netherlands and from the Port of Rotterdam to St. Maarten. The company placed the containers at the Kwantum and Leen Bakker distribution centres and picked them up once they were full.
Once in St. Maarten, the containers were unpacked and the contents distributed in the course of October and November under the supervision of Gerrit van Dijk, a citizen of Lunteren in the Netherlands who went to St. Maarten after the hurricane to assist, in cooperation with the White and Yellow Cross Care Foundation.
The Royal Dutch Navy also assisted with distributing the goods to White and Yellow Care Cross Foundation, Kids Foundation St. Maarten and Make St. Maarten Great Again Foundation. A large number of families in distress were greatly assisted through this generous donation of Kwantum and Leen Bakker.
Asked his opinion about St. Maarten’s prospects and the recovery, Campman said he hoped that after a rather slow start due to political differences between Philipsburg and The Hague about the conditions attached to the Reconstruction Fund, the recovery phase seemed to have gotten off the ground.
“I hope that this beautiful island and its tourism sector will be fully restored so that it can flourish again and emerge even stronger, with a more resilient, sustainable infrastructure,” said Campman, who was struck by the spirit of the St. Maarten people. “They didn’t stand idly by, but they got to work to clean up and restore their island.” Campman said he would certainly return to St. Maarten for another visit.
In total, six containers with relief goods went to St. Maarten under the auspices of Make St. Maarten Great Again. Five of them were sponsored by the GLE company. Orange Grove, the music band which largely originates from St. Maarten, paid for the shipping cost of the sixth container with the proceeds of a fundraising concert in Rotterdam. This concert, which was held at Annabel Theatre on October 14, featured performances of many bands and artistes who contributed free of charge to the cause of St. Maarten and its people.
Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/72844-kwantum-top-executive-felt-compelled-to-help-st-maarten
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