Building a perfect world

Attention garage sale shoppers: the mega event you've been dreaming of is here.
    Trailers full of office furniture, electronics, clothes, toys, sports equipment and a smorgasbord of other items will go on sale Saturday at Becton, Dickinson and Company.
    "It will be giant," said Peter Allen, senior director of BD's infusion therapy team.
    Culled from the attics and basements of nearly 1,000 employees, the sale items will benefit Project Perfect World, an organization that has helped thousands of underprivileged children since its inception in 1995.
    Supported through monetary and supply donations, PPW sends medical teams to poverty-stricken countries to perform maxillofacial, dental and orthopedic surgery on children every year.
    "The charity has no employees, no office, anything at all - it's all volunteer," said Allen, who has gone on four missions sponsored by PPW and is going on a fifth this fall.
    In November, a team of doctors and support staff - some of whom are from Utah - will travel to Guayaquil, Ecuador. Packing most of their own medical equipment, the team will work 18-hour days for a week performing orthopedic surgeries on about 40 children at the Gilberto Children's Hospital.
    Another 150 or so children will be seen in a clinic and fitted with braces and wheelchairs.
    "You show up at this [hospital] on Sunday morning and there are 1,000 people there holding kids, some with X-rays," Allen said, adding: "When you actually get to hold, touch and meet the parents, and meet the kids, it's incredibly moving."
    In addition to performing operations and working in clinic, the team will also teach their physician colleagues.
    "You can't just go four weeks a year and fix the problem," Allen said, "you have to help people become more self sufficient."
    Gloria Cheng, an anesthesiologist who starts work at University Hospital this fall, said the team will work on children who have problems that range from cleft lip and club feet to burns and contractures (loss of joint motion due to the shortening of the muscles or tendons).
    "It's not only the kids you're affecting," she said, "it affects the families as well. The parents are . . . very touched. It's an amazing experience to be able to give a child the ability to walk when they couldn't walk before. How that feels is beyond what you can express."
    These are stories that have inspired the 1,000 employees at BD. They've rallied to spearhead multiple fundraisers for PPW. For each dollar they raise, the company matches it.
    Allen estimated his colleagues at BD will raise between $80,000 and $100,000 by the end of the summer by holding silent auctions, bake sales, car washes - and of course, their biggest gig, the garage sale.
    "You do it a dollar at a time," he said.
    BD, which recently remodeled its Sandy offices for the first time since the 1960s, will be contributing a truckload of office furniture and supplies to the sale.
    "It's such a good news story from a local company that is so deeply committed to changing the world," Allen said.
   
   lrosetta@sltrib.com
   
   Fundraiser
    * The Project Perfect World fundraising garage sale is Saturday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. outside the offices of Becton, Dickinson and Company at the southwest corner of 9400 South State St.