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Home  Articles Travel - International and local Bob in Australia -- Asia crisis..
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Bob in Australia -- Asia crisis.. |
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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 FranceMercy 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.
Bob Harris
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