DAILY NEWS ONLINE


OTHER EDITIONS

Budusarana On-line Edition
Silumina  on-line Edition
Sunday Observer

OTHER LINKS

Marriage Proposals
Classified Ads
Government - Gazette
Mihintalava - The Birthplace of Sri Lankan Buddhist Civilization

Instant aid groups give fast relief in tsunami zone



Volunteers from Christian aid group Service International haul cement blocks. Stumbling in the tropical heat after a 40-hour flight from St. Louis in the United States, volunteers from Service International have been put right to work building homes for Sri Lankan tsunami survivors. Reuters

Ambalangoda, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - Ruth Max looked around at the shambles the tsunami had made of her beach house on Sri Lanka's southern coast and thought it just wasn't fair.

How could she rebuild their two-storey retirement home while ignoring the devastation all around her.

"I've known these people for years. They're more than statistics. They're our neighbours," Max said in a telephone interview from her home in Amsterdam.

So she and her husband started an aid group.

It is one of many spontaneous efforts that surfaced after the strongest earthquake in 40 years unleashed an unprecedented tsunami on Dec. 26 that left 228,000 people dead or missing in a dozen Indian Ocean nations.

They emailed friends, set up a Web site and raised a few thousand dollars right away. That was enough to to put up 42 temporary shacks for the homeless. Then friends of friends sent money. That led to more projects. The money is still trickling in five months later.

"As long as the money comes in, our circle of projects gets larger," Max said.

To rebuild livelihoods, they gave 20 catamarans to fishermen and donated 30 machines that turn coconut husks into rope, a local cottage industry.

Working through a committee consisting of their house caretaker, the fishing cooperative chief and local officials, they have donated computers to schools and a loudspeaker to the police station for a basic tsunami warning system, among other projects.

Waves of compassion

The stunning television pictures of a phenomenon few people had ever seen, and the sheer scope of the disaster, prompted an unprecedented outpouring of charity across the world.

A lot of it - no one knows how much - is going to micro-aid groups who have been more quick to provide relief and rehabilitation with small, concrete projects than governments in the region, who have been roundly criticised for being sluggish in their response.

Young people taking a year off to travel around the world began showing up in Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka offering to help.

Bill Crosby, a house painter from Mill Creek, Washington, flew to southern Thailand to search for missing friends and ended up selling the family home and using the profits to take food by sailboat to outlying islands inhabited by sea gypsies and illegal Burmese migrants.

Kushil Gunasekera planned on handing out scholarships to promising primary school cricketers at his small literacy foundation in Seenigama village on Dec. 26.

Instead, the former cricket club champion led them in fleeing the onrushing tsunami waves that killed more than 150 in the village.

His "Unconditional Compassion" is now a tsunami NGO, rebuilding the village and creating a cottage industry in coir for people who before the tsunami were illegally mining coral and destroying the reef essential to protecting against the next tsunami.

"As much as the wave has destroyed, the waves of compassion have come through. We can make this a blessing throughout the rural community," Gunasekera told Reuters.

In Khao Lak, Thailand, where many of the 3,000 people killed in the tsunami were foreign tourists, about 180 volunteers are working at a resort-turned-NGO, the "4kali.org Foundation".

The net-based NGO was created by the parents of 15-year-old Kali Breisch, who was killed when the tsunami swamped Khao Lak's luxury beach hotels.

Army of youth

It provides money to aid orphans, repair schools and "help local communities find sources of income that don't depend on tourism", said Britny Must, of Franklin, Michigan, a world traveller who was among the first to arrive.

An army of youth under the banner of "HiPhiPhi" (www.hiphiphi.com) is rebuilding a small island near Phuket, Thailand that was a noted party haven on Asia's hippie-backpacker trail.

In Indonesia, there were so many medical teams in Aceh at the start of the disaster, a Belgian doctor posted a note in the U.N.'s media headquarters looking for work.

Indonesia has since mainly weeded out non-professionals among the 180 NGOs operating in Aceh, which since 2003 has been closed to foreigners because of a military campaign against rebels.

The Internet has become a key fundraising tool. Much of the estimated $750 million to $1 billion that Americans alone have privately donated was raised on the Internet.

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton, now the U.N. envoy for tsunami relief, said the Asian tsunami is the first international crisis where technology had helped ordinary people make a difference.

"A lot of people were concerned about sending money to big organisations, because they didn't know how the money would be spent," Ruth Max said. "But with micro-aid, you know whether you're giving money to buy boats or computers or 350 pairs of socks for schoolchildren."

Kushil at "Unconditional Compassion" said the small groups also spend far less of the donors' money on overhead. "Ours is less than five percent. The bigger NGOs, the U.N., they're using 20 to 40 percent of the donations on overhead."

Traditional aid groups are sceptical. Ad hoc nonprofessional groups make coordination more difficult in a catastrophe, create disparities and inequities and may contribute to aid dependency in the long run, they say.

Oxfam America President Raymond Offenheiser said on the group's Web site (oxfamamerica.org) that in the first weeks after the disaster so many groups and individuals came "there were more organisations than there was work to be done".

FEEDBACK | PRINT

One Unit Four colour Sheet-fed Offset Printing Machine
 Kapruka Online
. Send Gifts to SL
. Online Shopping
. News & Discussions
www.eagle.com.lk

http://www.mrrr.lk/(Ministry of Relief Rehabilitation & Reconciliation)

www.Pathmaconstruction.com

www.ceylincoproperties.com

www.millenniumcitysl.com

www.singersl.com

www.peaceinsrilanka.org

www.helpheroes.lk

 
 

| News | Editorial | Business | Features | Political | Security | Sports | World | Letters | Obituaries |

 

Produced by Lake House Copyright © 2003 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.

Comments and suggestions to : Web Manager