TeledyN: Best Bets in Tsunami Relief

Best Bets in Tsunami Relief

Monday, January 3, 2005

As JOHO notes, before cutting a check for Pastor Bob's Parish, you'd want a recommendation no more than one hop along the buddy-list; colour me suspicious by nature, but I'm likewise hesitant to hand my aid donations to be proxied by the Big Names for fear of burocratic waste and graft networks. After all, we want to help these people, not buy them a lottery ticket, and it's to these aims that the AIP is attempting to sift out the top 9 brand-name relief agents:

The American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP) announces its top-rated list of charities offering aid to the over one million displaced people. AIP, a leading charity watchdog that issues letter grade (A to F) ratings of nonprofit groups, identifies the following 9 relief charities, which are providing aid to the victims that receive an A or B grade based on the portion of their budget going to program services and their fundraising efficiency
( Charity Watch )

It's comforting to find the Red Cross top-rated in their approved list. Our local Bluewater District School Board has partnered with them to proxy lunch-money donations from the children.

Just as an aside, the following press-release update comes from the Red Cross website:

Nine American Red Cross workers currently in or en-route to affected areas (Sri Lanka, Maldives, Indonesia and India) with expertise to support relief effort in three primary areas: water sanitation services, family linking and reunification, and relief supply distribution
On December 31st , the American Red Cross announced an initial $30 million in aid was on its way to the affected areas. Of this, $25 million will help pay for relief food supplies and the other $5 million will be used for nonfood relief items, such as hygiene kits
From December 26, 2004, through January 2, 2005 (as of 01/02/05 @ 4:00 PM), more than $79.2 million has been raised. Of that $79.2 million in pledged donations, approximately $25.2 million has been received in cash. Approximately half of the donations have come through the www.redcross.org online donation site
American Red Cross leadership will continue to work with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent, its sister societies and other international partners in the coming days and weeks on this expansive international relief effort

Submitted by mrG on Mon, 2005-01-03 10:41.

mrG's blog
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Tsunami Aid (IDEP)

Submitted by mrG on Thu, 2005-01-06 16:36.

Further to JOHO's comment about placing our money in hands we can trust, here's where May and I are placing the bulk of our donation ... because we have a direct line of communications to them through a mutual friend in Hongkong:

Yayasan IDEP is an Indonesian non-profit foundation that was formally established in Bali, Indonesia in 1999, at the height of Indonesiaâ€™s economic crisis. IDEPâ€™s objective was to respond to urgent needs for sustainable food production and resource management, while conveying the importance of environmental education for sustainable living.

I worked with Wai Chi to ensure Aceh Aid at IDEP was quickly PayPal enabled, and I'm delighted to also see they have taken my advice to post their progress to a blog.

If you're short on cash to donate but have some tech abilities (which you do or you wouldn't be here) they have also put out a call for virtual volunteers:

We need top notch "virtual volunteers" for our aid efforts to handling things that don't need to physically be done here such. Things like fixing - and updating - our distribution lists, creating databases of volunteer applicants, finding key contacts, and helping with communications, the web site and related infrastructure.

Their blog-site is unfortunately crippled for comments and contact (it's at MSN Spaces) but you can reach them via info@idepfoundation.org and I'm hoping they can get their website comment issues -- I'm sure they can think of a thousand things they'd rather do than fix MSN's comment-box.

I have also added a sidebar with the direct link to donate to IDEP specifically for their present relief work in Aceh, mediated by a very trustworth partner in the United States. Read their website, visit their blog and then just click the link here to make a donation; it's a straight-through link, I'm not involved in any way beyond donating some column space to their link, your money goes straight to IDEP, with some additional matching-grant funds added by the Tides Foundation, all in all a pretty good deal if you ask me.

I just read the posting from

Submitted by David Mendoza (not verified) on Tue, 2005-01-11 20:37.

I just read the posting from Jan 6 from mrG, and as (volunteer) fundraising coordinator for ACEH AID at IDEP, a big thank you for both your support from ("May and I") and your recommendation and link to IDEP on the webpage. Yes, we have been busy with some other pressing matters but the "fixes" are slowly being made on the website. Within a day or so we will have a non-profit (NGO) in Australia that will accept donations for ACEH AID at IDEP and a new UPDATE from Aceh will be posted on our website today (hopefully). Anyone interested in helping with fundraising please contact me. THANK YOU, again from ACEH AID at IDEP in Ubud, BALI

You are very welcome, David,

Submitted by mrG on Sun, 2005-01-16 20:09.

You are very welcome, David, and, really, thank you -- while the rest of us mix links and mince words about all this, it's still a surreal abstract; you (and the rest of Aceh Aid) are actually there in the reality, and doing something about it. Bravo and may fortune rise to meet you all.

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