BobHarris.com - How to help folks on the wrong end of a tsunami

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Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

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How to help folks on the wrong end of a tsunami

Tag it now -

Sunday, 26 December 2004

Very weird to be sitting in a hotel here in Melbourne, completely safe, as if nothing has happened, when just a plane ride away tens of thousands of lives have just been destroyed.

Not sure how to help, but there are people who know what to do and are directly on the scene. These people can make your dollars work in ways most of us have never had to think about:

Doctors Without Borders is already firing up teams to provide medical assistance and assist with clean water and sanitation systems and will probably have people on the ground with 24 hours. You can donate online here.

Telecoms San Frontieres is relatively new organization created to bring satellite phone lines and other communications equipment to help other relief organizations get organized. They're already sending people. Bizarrely, however, these high-tech types don't have an online donation thing set up (another victory for progressive logistics!), but you can send donations to:

Télécoms sans Frontières
20, Avenue Garcia Lorca
64000 Pau France

Mercy Corps is unusually efficient at converting donated dollars into aid, and they already had people in Sumatra, so their folks are already on the scene. They'll be working on food supplies, shelters, and medicine. You can contribute online here.

And of course, you can't go wrong with the Red Cross and Red Crescent, whose online donation thingy allows you to target your contribution in a depressingly handy scroll-down pop-up menu of hellish tragedy.

It's hard for me to imagine what's happening right now, even with news pictures and such. Last year I had the chance to walk along the shore at Batu Ferringhi, a not-very-big beach area where tourists in paddle boats mingled with local kids bobbing in the surf and older fishermen endlessly heading out to sea. I really loved it there. Last night, dozens of people were killed, and they're still trying to figure out how many of the fishing boats never came back. When I picture the boats I saw with my own eyes, OK, I get it. That's pretty horrible.

So to grok Sri Lanka or Sumatra I guess I just have to picture a hundred Batu Ferringhis all along Asian coastlines, with sometimes five or ten stacked up in one spot...

Words shouldn't have to exist to describe things like this.

UPDATE: Oxfam is another terrific group, who so far seem mostly to be involved in getting injured people proper medical attention. You can donate to their Asian relief efforts here. Thanks to several emailers for the suggestion.

CARE, meanwhile, is already feeding about 14,000 people in the hardest-hit parts of Sri Lanka. You can help them keep survivors properly fed here.