Advice to tsunami donors: Send cash, not bread
30 Dec 2004 00:05:04 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Relief groups have some friendly advice for people who want to lend a helping hand to desperate tsunami survivors: Don't donate that old sweater or a loaf of bread. Just send cash.
"CARE as a policy does not take in-kind contributions. It's too expensive to ship stuff abroad. Then, the logistics of getting goods to the site are often very complicated," said spokeswoman Lurma Rackley of the international aid group now active in 70 countries around the world.
U.S. President George W. Bush had similar advice for potential donors,telling reporters in Crawford, Texas, that gifts of money would help organizations "focus resources and assets to meet specific needs."
Some relief groups will accept goods but they also have many stories about inappropriate offers.
"People call up and say, 'Can we send a loaf of bread?' We received donations of high heel shoes for East Timor, and that's really not going to help," said Caroline Green of aid group Oxfam International. East Timor in Southeast Asia is one of the world's poorest lands.
"Cash enables us to scale up quickly, buy needed equipment and start getting out relief," Green said. Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, said businesses and governments as well as individuals should always consult with a major relief agency like the United Nations or the Red Cross-Red Crescent system before donating anything besides money.
"In my 25 years of humanitarian work, there have been too many examples of week three and four and five really being a week where you try to navigate between the things that there was not really a need for and those things that may be clogged up that there is a desperate need for," said Egeland, who is coordinating the response to the Asian tsunami disaster.
"There are very few airstrips in many of these areas and air space and air strip space is very very precious," he said.
After an earthquake struck the Iranian city of Bam last year, killing 31,000 and leaving 100,000 homeless, relief aircraft unloaded their goods at the nearest air strip in such a rush that the runway was soon too crowded to use, U.N. officials recalled.
Volunteer search-and-rescue teams, not bothering to check first with local officials, kept pouring in to Bam from around the world for weeks after the search for survivors was called off, officials said.
"We ask people to send cash. The cost of transporting goods is just prohibitive," said Alisha Lumea of the International Rescue Committee, a relief group active in 25 countries.
Absolutely disasturous. Msn i think was showing a home taping of the wave comming in...absolutely unbelievable. The devestation of the country, home, life, business is all too much to register. After being in China for a week and visiting the poorest cities/towns and applying that to Thailand i can only begin to imagine the chaos those people have to go through. I say prayers for them in the best hopes diseases do not kill off the children...
/www.ifrc.org/helpnow/donate/donate_response.asp
