Los Amigos 12 will see Rotarians deliver five fire trucks and three handivans to Mazatlan, Mexico.
Randy Smith is with the Rotary Club of Olds and Rotary Club District 5360. District 5360 is heading up this project.
He points out that the Los Amigos project began in 2011 with a donated school bus being taken to Mexico. Smith says “we’ve taken 61 emergency vehicles down and that includes fire trucks, ambulances, school busses. We’ve taken a lot of the handicapped vans down which are needed in different communities in Mexico. So yeah we are on 61 vehicles down. The great thing about this project is all but one vehicle is still operational in Mexico. These were 20, 30 year old vehicles up here in Canada. Now they are down there and they are still being serviced and operated and providing, you know, life saving vehicles and ambulances to the community down there.”
Smith has been on five other trips and is coordinator for this one. He says “businesses in Olds here have supported the program and we do appreciate it. I wish everyone could see the impact that these vehicles have when you get down to Mexico to the small communities. These vehicles while we drop them off in Mazatlan they actually go right from coast to coast. They push these vehicles out to smaller communities. So it’s not just a centralized area and it is really having an impact on providing emergency services for people who would have to do without.”
According to Smith, they are taking 16 dedicated drivers plus he is going as the coordinator. The Rotary Club of Olds will account for 10 of the 17 total participants as they take the 8 vehicles to Mexico.
Follow along with their journey on the Rotary Club of Olds Facebook page, he notes they will be doing daily post during Los Amigos 12. Smith says “it’s always a challenge taking 20 and 30 year old vehicles 4,000 kilometers. So it tens to be an interesting daily update on what is happening.”
Smith says they will leave Olds to go to Lethbridge on Saturday morning to meet the rest of the Rotarians from around their District. The Los Amigos 12 project participants will then hit the road heading for the United States border on Sunday morning and then its on to Mexico from there.
They will return to Calgary on October 12th.