This story in today's Washington Post is gut-wrenching: A Pakistani flood victim was forced to give birth in a graveyard that currently is filled with hundreds of thousands of flood victims. According to the article, she is one of 500,000 women impacted by the floods whom the United Nations expects will give birth over the next six months. The article goes on to describe the challenges of delivering aid to 8 million (that's right, 8,000,000) flood victims in Pakistan.
An article in last Monday's Chronicle of Philanthropy compared the $10.6 million that 22 US aid groups had raised so far to help the victims of the Pakistan floods, versus the $560 million that 40 aid groups had raised to help Haiti's earthquake victims two weeks after that disaster. There are fewer aid groups working in Pakistan than in Haiti, which explains part of the fundraising gap, but still... we can do better than this.
I'm making my first donation to help Pakistan today. (I'm donating through the American Red Cross, www.redcross.org, but there is a big list of places where you can donate at the end of the Chronicle of Philanthropy article). Will you join me?
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
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