Doing his thing
Yours truly (left) and Doug on one of his previous visits to Phnom Penh in November last yearWith help, Montrose man dousing Cambodian fires - by Reilly Capps (Telluride Daily Planet, Colorado, USA)
Cambodia doesn’t have much, and what little they do have keeps burning down, because that beautiful and battered country doesn’t have enough fire fighting equipment or fire stations to keep up. The whole country, in fact, has far fewer fire stations than the Western Slope. In the capital, Phnom Penh, for example, there is only one fire station and just nine trucks to protect two million people. It’s not uncommon for dozens, even hundreds of rickety buildings to burn down before a truck can get to the blaze. That dire situation struck Montrose resident and former volunteer fireman Doug Mendel as nearly criminal, and he’s working to change it. He’s coordinated the donation of tons of gear and two fire trucks to departments throughout the country. He long ago fell in love with this southeast Asian nation famous for producing Angkor Wat and children of Angelina Jolie. While on vacation in Cambodia in 2001, Mendel noticed that the fire station in Sihanoukville was unbelievably run-down and decrepit. “It was very basic and almost barren,” he said. When he came back, he convinced the Breckenridge fire department to donate an old fire truck, and he raised the $18,000 necessary to ship it over to Sihanoukville. In 2005, three members of the Breck fire department traveled to Cambodia to teach the locals how to use it. “It was actually really awesome,” said Kim Scott, a captain in the Breck department. She couldn’t make the trip, but heard that the Cambodians “were so appreciative it makes you want to cry.”
A lot of things about Cambodia make you want to cry, since the story of Cambodia since 1970 is pure tragedy: illegal American bombing and intense civil war, and then the horror of Pol Pot, who promoted communism by snuffing out 1.7 million of his own countrymen and left huge parts of the country booby-trapped with land mines. Today, the president is bringing real reform and the economy is improving, but one-armed kids still beg on street corners and sit below your table, big eyes desperate for a scrap of leftover noodles. To travel there is to have your heart expanded, lifted...and broken into a million little pieces. And Mendel’s big heart isn’t reserved just for underfunded fire stations. He’s also donated cameras to national park rangers so that they can document poaching and illegal logging activities, and brought over medical and dental supplies for street children. And, he gives them stuffed animals. “It makes their day,” Mendel said. "They're such genuinely happy people. Especially the children. They have so little. It just light 'em up." Last year, Mendel had a fire truck built for a remote province, Ratanakiri, and his project this year is to build a whole new fire station in that province’s capital, Ban Lung. Building a whole fire station, from foundation to roof, costs just $35,000 — less than a new Toyota FourRunner. To fund his travel, Mendel saves what he makes at the Montrose Home Depot. And when he returns from Cambodia, he brings back silk purses, silk scarves, jewelry boxes and table cloths, and sells them around the Western Slope. Yesterday, he was peddling the Cambodian stuff at the Grand Junction Flea Market.
Mendel’s next term goal is to raise a couple hundred g’s to build two fire stations in Phnom Penh, since it breaks his heart to read about the fires that ravage the capital. There was a fire not long ago, he said, that took out 500 slum houses and just about every single possession a lot of families had. "It would bring tears to my eyes to see one or two more fire stations in Phnom Penh," Mendel said. Scott, the Breck fire captain, said her department’s relationship with Cambodia has expanded their world, and said Mendel made it possible. “He’s just an amazing man,” she said. “It’s a really nice feeling when you know you’re helping people.” Mendel returns to Cambodia in October, his 12th trip in six years, brining over 800 pounds of gear for the Phnom Penh station. His nonprofit, the Douglas Mendel Cambodian Relief Fund, is looking for donations. If you’d like to help, surf to dougmendel.com, where you can watch videos, see pictures and donate via PayPal. Or call him at 970-240-6120.
posted by Andy Brouwer at
11:19 PM
1 Comments:
Building a Future for Cambodia,
One Fire Truck at a Time
by Martinique Davis (www.telluridewatch.com)
Home Depot Employee Doug Mendel’s One-Man Relief Fund Delivers Hope for the Future
By Martinique Davis
Doug Mendel seems like an average guy. He works at Home Depot in Montrose. He drives a mid-size car. He’s reserved but friendly. If you were to meet him in a coffeeshop, you wouldn’t guess that he is the leader of a one-man crusade to improve the lives of people living in an impoverished country on the other side of the planet.
Mendel is the founder, head fundraiser, and the heart and soul of The Douglas Mendel Cambodian Relief Fund, a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization dedicated to helping meet the needs of disadvantaged Cambodians. Since 2003, Mendel has made 11 trips to Cambodia, bringing donated supplies and gear for several fire stations, two national parks, and two organizations that assist disadvantaged street children and disabled Cambodians.
Mendel’s mission is simple: Determine what the people’s needs are, then follow through with fulfilling those needs. From vitamins for street children to camera traps for wildlife at the national parks – and even to fire trucks for shorthanded fire stations, Mendel delivers – literally. It all started with three boxes of gear Mendel brought for a fire station in the small town of Sihanoukville in 2003. Over the course of five-and-a-half years, it has grown to the point where Mendel is a familiar face at the United Airlines check-in desk, where they, thankfully, waive the excess baggage fees. Since 2003, Mendel has brought over three tons of supplies to fire stations and other organizations in Cambodia. He even managed to ship a fire truck, donated by the Breckenridge Fire Department, to a fire station in Cambodia that didn’t have one.
“What I’ve realized is that even though this is basically a one-person nonprofit, it’s become so much bigger than just me. It’s about helping the Cambodian people, and there are so many people out there who want to jump on board something that is greater than themselves,” Mendel says.
This October, Mendel will return to Cambodia for his 12th trip in just over five years. The coming trip will differ from the rest, he says, since he hopes that during this visit he can lay the groundwork for the next chapter in the Douglas Mendel Cambodian Relief Fund, and start the shift away from bringing supplies to Cambodia and begin to implement plans to satisfy what he believes is one of the country’s biggest needs: the construction of new fire stations.
The Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh has only one fire station, which employs 80 firefighters, houses nine fire trucks, and covers and area with a population of roughly 1.4 million people. In comparison, the Telluride region boasts three fire stations – in Telluride, Mountain Village, and Placerville – in an area that is home to less than 5,000. Mendel’s goal for the next few years is to raise $200,000, which will enable the Douglas Mendel Cambodian Relief Fund to finance the construction of at least two more fire stations in the capital, and another in the impoverished Ratanakiri Province (home to one of Mendel’s donated fire trucks.)
Undertaking the task of building even one fire station, in a city more than 8000 miles from his home in Montrose, is a tall order, Mendel admits. Yet Mendel is a man who is accustomed to overcoming challenges. He did, after all, build a nonprofit relief organization from scratch, with no experience or familiarity with how to do so, armed with little more than motivation and a deep love for Cambodia and its people. After all, there is no instruction manual for building a nonprofit like the Douglas Mendel Cambodian Relief Fund.
In the summer of 1997, Doug Mendel was a guy from Colorado on a six-week vacation in Asia. On the tail end of that trip, Mendel stumbled upon something that would forever alter the course of his life: Cambodia. It was only a three-day visit, but during those three days Cambodia captured his heart. During his third trip there in 2001, Mendel visited a fire station in Sihanoukville. At the time, Mendel was a volunteer firefighter for Lake Dillon Fire and Rescue in Summit County. He says he was struck by how little the Cambodian firefighters had to work with at their station, describing conditions there as “barebones.”
“They didn’t have bays for their fire trucks, or shift quarters. They had to respond to fires in flipflops. They were really lacking in supplies and gear, all the stuff that we take for granted here. I just felt that the firefighters over there were my brothers too, and I figured I could do something to help them out,” he recalls.
Two years later, Mendel returned to Cambodia, bringing with him three boxes of station-wear clothing for the station in Sihanoukville, donated by Lake Dillon Fire and Rescue. Thus began his relationship with the firefighters of Sihanoukville, and eventually, his link to firefighters across Cambodia.
In 2006, Mendel managed to transport a donated fire truck from Breckenridge to the Sihanoukville station, and in 2007 the Douglas Mendel Cambodian Relief Fund financed the construction of another fire truck, which was built in Phnom Penh and donated to Ratanakiri Province.
Last year, Cambodian firefighters responded with one of the donated fire trucks to a fire in a market in a small village. Thanks to their quick response, no doubt the upshot of having a fire truck to respond with, only one stall suffered damages and no one was injured. Mendel received the news of this rescue through a Cambodian friend in Sihanoukville. “People in the community knew the story of the fire truck and they wanted to say thanks – they knew that without it, their entire market would have gone up in flames. All those families whose livelihoods depend on the market knew that they would have watched everything turn to ash, if it hadn’t been for that truck,” Mendel says.
While providing the nation’s deprived fire stations with property- and life-saving equipment emerged as Mendel’s initial focus, the Douglas Mendel Cambodian Relief Fund has expanded to include other humanitarian missions as well. He has helped equip rangers at two national parks with digital cameras, GPS units, and camera traps which photograph wildlife and help the national parks keep tabs on threatened species. Mendel’s organization also provides clothing, stuffed animals, vitamins, dental supplies, mannequins for CPR training, radios, digital cameras and camcorders for the children and staff at two Cambodian organizations that assist disadvantaged street children and disabled citizens.
Mendel’s grassroots approach to humanitarianism is funded in part by the Cambodian people themselves. After each trip to Cambodia he brings back handmade crafts, mostly silk purses and scarves, to sell at various venues, with the proceeds all going back into the nonprofit and towards the purchase of gear and supplies for the various organizations and groups that the foundation supports.
Shortly after moving to Montrose from Moab four months ago, Mendel set up a stall at the Grand Junction Farmers Market, where that he met a woman living in the area who had come from Cambodia. “You are the first person I’ve met in this country who is helping my people,” the woman told him.
Mendel may be the first person in the region helping underprivileged Cambodians, but he hopes he won’t be the only person: In addition to selling Cambodian crafts at regional venues, he also raises money for the nonprofit through individual donations collected at his website, www.dougmendel.com.
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