Burma appeal progress

Several readers have sent money to Burma’s monks, via Avaaz.

This is a progress report on Club Troppo’s joint campain with John Quiggin to inspire reader donations to organisations assisting the victims of Cyclone Nargis in Burma. As John announced in an update yesterday, ‘donations so far totalling $1390 here and $2050 at Club Troppo.’ The Troppo tally has in fact risen by $200 since then. Ninety percent of the undertakings have already been backed up with receipts. I’ll list the contributors when I announce the final sum on Friday, unless they asked to stay anonymous. (If your receipt is in a different name from your blogging identity, I’ll use the former, except where I have instructions to the contrary.)

A huge thanks to all of you who have made donations. The results have surpassed expectations.

It seems as though, despite difficulties in getting visas for additional staff to enter Burma, the aid organisations are making good use of the personnel and resources they already had in the country. Their websites, which I linked in the original post, all have updates. Here’s a sample from World Vision:

World Vision assessment team has visited 26 shelters across Myaung Mya, an area some 50km north of the devasted town of Labutta. They found displaced people living in appalling conditions in make-shift shelters and camps where overcrowding and unsanitary conditions are prevalent.

As thousands of villagers leave the hardest-hit areas of the Irrawaddy Delta, they embark on a journey where there is almost no food or shelter and water is contaminated.

World Vision staff says some 30,000 people in Myaung Mya are seeking food, water and medical attention. Children many of them orphans are suffering from fever, diarrhoea and respiratory infections.

Hard on the heels of Cyclone Nargis, we now have a horrifying earthquake in China. The aid organisations don’t seem to be raising funds for that yet, but if they do, it might be an alternative for people who are sceptical about the NGOs’ ability to use the money efficiently in Burma. Let’s hope in any case that the Chinese Government can make a more efficient emergency response than its Burmese counterpart.