Through Ingenuity And Infrastructure Aid Flows To Burma Cyclone Victims

Main Category: Aid / Disasters
Article Date: 26 May 2008 - 0:00 PDT

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While large foreign aid organizations remain frustrated with their limited access to Burma, Foundation for the People of Burma, a U.S. based, public charity with an extensive network of Burmese staff and volunteers, has been providing essential survival supplies to cyclone victims since day 2 of the disaster. To date, Foundation for the People for Burma, through its nearly two hundred Burmese staff and volunteers has reached nearly 35,000 families with food, materials to build temporary shelter and toilets, water purification supplies, and other necessary household goods in Rangoon's outskirts and the hard-hit villages in the Delta. Its relief teams include more than 35 doctors, nurses and trained medics, who are treating infectious disease and trauma. The Foundation has also pioneered "child safe" centers in order to protect orphaned and traumatized children from exploitation.

More than two weeks into the effort, the Foundation has begun the long process of rebuilding homes and villages destroyed by the cyclone. Home construction projects are underway in two villages and deep water wells have been cleared of salt water in four villages for long-term access to clean water. Additionally, today we started an agricultural rehabilitation project to bring 200 acres of salinated rice paddy into fruition this harvest season.

To date, the San Francisco based foundation has raised nearly $700,000. With the funds, supplies have been purchased and means secured to deliver them (boats and trucks) to hard to access areas in the Delta. To continue the effort, additional funds are needed to maintain the flow of food and other critical supplies, and to purchase additional deep water pumps and construction materials for the rebuild.

The Foundation's ability to get aid through to people who need it, even as the government puts up barriers, is a function of its long-standing, sturdy network of community-based partnerships. By providing funds, advice and technical support to Burmese organizations, which predated the cyclone, the foundation's roots in the United States are invisible and unassailable. By working through this network of groups in numerous sites, the foundation has been able to deliver aid to the most vulnerable people in an agile and effective manner.

Donations are needed to continue this critical work. To support Foundation for the People of Burma, go to its website, http://www.foundationburma.org; or send a check to 225 Bush Street, Ste. #590, San Francisco, California 94104.

Foundation board members are available as expert resources for the press on the situation in Burma. Contact Gail Seneca, Ph.D., or Jack Kornfield, Ph.D. and former Buddhist monk in Burma, through the foundation.

Foundation for the People of Burma is the largest, independently supported, U.S. based humanitarian organization working exclusively in Burma since 1999. Foundation programs have provided tens of thousands of urban and rural citizens with primary education, access to clean water, and basic medical care. Its goal is humanitarian relief to Burma, which is one of the poorest and most isolated countries in the world.

Foundation for the People of Burma

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