Remembrance Week - 26th December, 2005 - 1st January, 2006

Last year, on the 26th December, an earthquake, and then a tsunami, killed, wounded, or impoverished hundreds of thousands of people in South Asia.

During the course of the year, other disasters took their toll too. Most devastating of them: Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the South-East coast of the USA; and another enormous earthquake near Pakistan's border with India.

These disasters took their immediate toll, and, each time, the world tried to help. But as calamity piled upon calamity, there has been a certain amount of fatigue. Perhaps people's stock of goodwill has run low. Perhaps seeing too much suffering hardens us.

But, the fact is, the suffering from those disasters has not ceased. Parts of South Asia have still not recovered from December 26th, 2004. In the USA, normalcy hasn't returned to New Orleans. In Pakistan, thousands are still homeless, and may not survive the harsh Himalayan winter.

They need your help.

Last December and this January, the online community came together as never before to help in the aid efforts in South-East Asia. The lessons learned there were put to use, and improved upon, when the other tragic events of the year unfolded.

Can we harness that goodwill, that togetherness, that willingness to help once more?

The WorldWideHelp group would like you to join us in Remembrance Week. Here's what we suggest you do.

Use your blogs, your home pages, your wikis, your newsletters. Link to your favourite charities and NGOs, write a paragraph about them and the work they are doing, and ask your readers to make a donation. (If you'd like to find some more charities and NGOs, please take a look at this page on our TsunamiHelp wiki, this one on our KatrinaHelp wiki, or this one on our QuakeHelp wiki.)

Please link back to this page to help pass the word. You can use the image above.

Please use this Technorati Tag: Disaster Remembrance Week.
Here's the code:
<a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/disaster%20remembrance%20week" rel="tag">Disaster Remembrance Week</a>

In this post, we have a few more banners and buttons, with intructions on the code you must post to use them.

Tsunami Anniversary Trek - Thailand

Evelyn Rodrigues, who found herself caught in the tsunamis in Thailand, and had live-blogged her experiences thus bringing the pain and suffering closer to people all over the world, goes back on a Tsunami Anniversary Trek, and once more shares with her readers, a first-hand account of her trip. Worth a read for those interested in looking into the lives of people, their pain, and fears that still haunt them, one year after the terrible disaster.

Sri Lanka to commemorate tsunami victims on Dec. 26

The Sri Lankan government is to hold a special commemorative program in remembrance of those who lost their lives in the tsunami catastrophe on Dec. 26, Daily News reported Thursday. President Mahinda Rajapakse will attend the event which will also coincide with the launch of the "Jayalanka" program to accelerate rehabilitation of the displaced victims.

A two-minute silence is also to be observed islandwide at 9:30 a.m. local time. During the period, all citizens are requested to stop whatever activity they are engaged in and remember those who lost their lives in the catastrophe and commit their dedication towards rebuilding the nation.


Source: Xinhua via People's Daily Online

800 Tsunami Bodies Remain Unnamed

Almost a year on and Australian experts are still on the ground in Thailand dealing with the appalling aftermath of the tsunami. The Australian Federal Police forensic team said yesterday another 800 bodies in Thailand are yet to be identified. Many never will be. AFP Disaster Victim Identification teams rushed to Thailand after the waves hit, putting to work their experience gained in identifying bodies in tropical climates during the aftermath of the Bali bombings. Once established, the AFP found itself co-ordinating a crack forensic squad made up of experts from 30 countries.

Though the horrific mess left behind by the tsunami is today in the back of most Australians' minds, the AFP DVI teams are still confronted with the horror on a daily basis, working in conditions that are hot and uncomfortable. The AFP will wind back its commitment to Thailand in February, but only after teaching the Royal Thai Police the latest scientific techniques in identifying bodies. Australia will also leave behind a $50,000 trailer kitted-out with the latest forensic equipment. About 5000 people died in Thailand when the tsunami smashed into the coast on Boxing Day. Read More....


Source: Herald Sun

Discovery Channel's Tsunami Show

Thanks to Maria Park for this useful information:

AMERICA’S TSUNAMI: ARE WE NEXT? follows an international team of 27 scientists, led by Dr. Kate Moran from the University of Rhode Island, as they become the first team to reach the seafloor site of the devastating December 26 Asian tsunami. Using state-of-the-art camera equipment, the special shows never-before-seen footage of the epicenter and the massive and dramatic geologic changes that caused gigantic waves.

AMERICA’S TSUNAMI: ARE WE NEXT? premieres December 18 at 9 PM (ET/PT) on Discovery Channel in US.

Most of Japan's bilateral tsunami aid remains untouched

More than two thirds of the bilateral aid Japan offered after the Indian Ocean tsunami remains untouched, raising questions on whether the massive assistance met victims' needs, a report said Monday. Japan was one of the biggest donors amid the outpouring of global sympathy following the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami, disbursing US$ 500 million to governments of affected countries and international aid groups.

But nearly 70 percent of the 24.6 billion yen ($204 million) in bilateral aid to Indonesia, the Maldives and Sri Lanka remains unused nearly a year later, the Asahi Shimbun reported. Indonesia, the biggest aid recipient at 14.6 billion yen, did not start using the money until May 4 and as of Nov. 10 had withdrawn only 15.8 percent of the funds, the newspaper said.

Japan, the world's biggest aid donor in dollar terms after the United States, usually offers low-interest loans rather than grants and attaches the money to specific projects. But after the tsunami, Japan broke with its usual practice by giving cash handouts and letting governments choose what to spend the money on, although their plans still had to be approved by Tokyo. By contrast, Japan offered $20 million in aid after Kashmir's earthquake in October.


Source: The Jakarta Post

The tsunami: Living in transition

Just under half a million Sri Lankan people were displaced by the tsunami that hit the island's coastline on the morning of 26 December 2004. Nearly a year on, many are still living in refugee camps, waiting for government and aid agency help to rebuild their homes. They have been told they may have to stay in transitional shelter for up to three years, while the estimated 100,000 homes to house them are built.

Save The Children Sri Lanka has funded PhotoVoice, a London non-profit organisation, to run a five-week intensive photojournalism training workshops near Matara, in the island's southern province, to let children document their lives a year after the tsunami. Journalists David Gill and Annie Dare are teaching eight children between the ages of 12 to 18 from the coastal village of Kamburagamuwa.

Some of the group lost family members, some lost friends, some lost belongings and some lost homes. As the anniversary of the tsunami approaches, each of these children is lucky enough to have a permanent house to call his or her own. For the next fortnight, they are partnering families from the nearby fishing community of Talaramba. Here they are gathering stories from and photographing the daily lives of people forced to live in an overpopulated transitional shelter made of wood and corrugated tar sheets.

In the coming weeks, Annie and David will also be training children living in the transitional camps in photography, so that they too can tell their stories. The next update on the BBC News website will include these pictures. An exhibition of the final body of work will be exhibited in Sri Lanka at the beginning of December and also at Save the Children in London EC1 from 19 December. If you are interested in finding out more about this project or the resulting exhibition please contact anna at photovoice.org


Source: BBC News via ServeSriLanka

Aceh Diary: Blogging from Aceh

Shaela Rahman of the International Finance Corporation has recently moved to Aceh to set up the Private Enterprise Partnership for Aceh and Nias. She has just arrived, but will be blogging on the World Bank's PSD Blog several times a month, sharing her progress and thoughts. Click here to view an introductory post about Shaela and her first blog posting can be found here.