Make A Difference - Support the American Red Cross - Help Tsunami Victims
More than 71,000 people are known to have lost their lives in East Africa and South Asia in the aftermath of the earthquake and resulting tsunamis on December 26 and the
death toll is expected to rise to over 100,000 according to the International Red Cross in Geneva. The American Red Cross reports that emergency assessment and first-aid teams were on the ground quickly and are already working with local groups to support relief efforts. If you would like to help, you can make a financial donation to the American Red Cross using the Amazon Honor System. One hundred percent of donations made will go to the American Red Cross disaster relief efforts.
CNN reports that the International Red Cross has also set up a website to help families locate missing people at
www.familylinks.icrc.org. Apparently traffic to this website has been very high with many registrations overwhelming the host server. At the time of this writing the website is running very slowly.
With all the talk about how stingy the "rich" countries have been, I was amazed to find an
article on Al Jazeera cataloging the amount of aid provided by various countries. Notably Japan is contributing $40 million, the European Union is contributing $41 million, the U.S. is contributing $35 million, Britan is contributing $29 million. Australia is contributing $27 million, and then there is France contributing 100,000 Euros. Like most reports, this only catalogs direct government aid contributions and does not take into account other contributions. Some estimates suggest that aid through charities in the U.S. may add up to more than government aid. Likewise catalogs like this do not take into account the costs of aid teams, ships, aircraft, and other support for disaster relief efforts.
