Give2Asia Giving Forum

Give2Asia's One-Year Anniversary Report on the Burma Cyclone

Marking the one-year anniversary of Cyclone Nargis, which killed over 130,000 people, Give2Asia has released its Burma Cyclone interim report on relief and recovery work done with support from its community of donors and clients. Here is a letter from Give2Asia's president & CEO Michael Howe, which accompanied the report.

Dear friends,

On behalf of everyone at Give2Asia, I would like to thank those who have supported relief and recovery efforts in Burma following Cyclone Nargis.  

In the past year, the international community has come together to support communities battered by the storm, especially those in the Irrawaddy Delta region. Millions of lives were changed forever by the cyclone and many continue to suffer because of lost family members, destroyed homes and devastated local economies.

We have mobilized our donor community and contributed nearly half a million dollars to help our four partner organizations working within Burmese villages to help the survivors.

Unfortunately, this work has not been easily accomplished and much of the international aid for Burma has not flowed as it should have for such a disaster. With 138,000 people dead or missing, hundreds of thousands still rely on outside assistance, and struggle to access clean water and other basic needs to survive as farmers and fishermen. For this reason, we will continue to seek out donors and new projects that help address the immediate and long-term needs.

Both staff and trustees of Give2Asia have been able to visit Burma informally over the past year to see first hand the work of charitable groups within Burma. International aid is having an impact; people are gaining access to clean water, health care, and other resources. Everyone we have spoken with is extremely grateful for the aid from the international community, and people are diligently working to rebuild.

If you have any questions at all about Give2Asia's role, please contact Gillian Yeoh by emailing to gyeoh@give2asia.org or calling 415.743.3336. I look forward to reporting back on this work in the near future.

Best wishes,

Michael Howe

President & CEO

Give2Asia

Visiting Burma After the Devasting Cylcone

A look at Burma after the cyclone through the eyes of Dien Yuen, Director of Philanthropy

I was on vacation in Burma (aka Myanmar) several weeks ago and had the opportunity to visit and learn more about several charitable organizations there. While poor, Burma is a beautiful country with friendly and generous people. When I asked how the local people responded to the cyclone, many people talked about how the community came together and helped others even though they barely had anything left. Below is a brief description of a day trip in the delta region.

This morning, we started off to Kungyangon, a region in the southern tip of Burma where Cyclone Nargis overturned trees, blew houses away, and killed people and animals last May. It took us three and a half hours to drive the area that was forty miles away. We turned up dust along the newly, hand packed rock and sand road. The van we were in was shaking from the rocky road and I was worried that the glass on our van would shatter. Along the way, we passed vans with logos of the International Red Cross/Crescent Society, World Vision, Save the Children, and the Marie Stokes.

World Water Day - March 22

This Sunday is World Water Day, a time to recognize the growing challenges for communities in Asia seeking and maintaining sustainable water sources. Several of Give2Asia’s partners are focused on the issue of clean water and its impact on health, and their work helps to address an issue that is growing in scale across Asia, as well as globally.

650 MILLION WITHOUT SUSTAINABLE ACCESS

Lack of access to safe, clean drinking water is a particularly critical issue for poor and rural people across the Asia Pacific region. According to the Asian Development Bank, over 650 million people in the region do not have sustainable access to safe drinking water. China, the world’s most populous nation, alone has achieved only 77 percent coverage in accessibility to clean water, leaving approximately 23 percent of its 1.3 billion people to manually gather water from questionable or unsafe sources.

Some of the regions smaller, geographically and culturally diverse countries with limited basic infrastructure and institutions have abysmally low levels of access to safe drinking water. In Laos, for example, only 43 percent of the population has access to a safe, reliable source of drinking water. Cambodia’s accessibility is even lower, with 34 percent of the total population able to secure clean water on a regular basis.

The Saffron Revolution: A Perspective One Year Later from a Burmese Activist in the U.S.

By XuanThu Pham, Give2Asia

In September 2007, Burmese Buddhist monks led a peaceful demonstration attracting over 100,000 people to protest against sharp rises in the price of food and petroleum. Without notice, the government had removed fuel subsidies, which caused the price to rise as high as 100 percent.  Food prices surged dramatically worldwide, causing economic instability and social unrest in poor and developing nations. The resulting protests and crackdown are known in Burma as the Saffron Revolution. Days after the protest, the military junta began a crackdown that focused on thousands of Buddhist monks: the military and police disrobed, beat, tortured, and even killed many of these monks. Over 4,000 monks and protesters were arrested, and today there are more than 2,000 political prisoners in Burma's prison cells.

 

Generals of the military junta exert their power through brute force with little interest in dialogue or negotiation. Burmese dissidents are either imprisoned or exiled. And in the case of Aung San Suu Kyi, a proponent of democracy, she has been under house arrest since 2003.  

Nyunt Than is the President of the Burmese American Democratic Alliance (BADA), a nonprofit organization led by a group of activists from the San Francisco bay area working toward democracy and human rights in Burma.  Than laments over the tragic result of the Saffron Revolution. What started out to be a peaceful, nonviolent demonstration resulted in many instances of torture, death, and arrests. But his grief does not show through anger or tears. It is evident from the determination in his voice and calm demeanor.  

Challenges in the Post-Cyclone Nargis Landscape, Myanmar

While much of the relief work is complete, details on the current political environment and the needs of local people help to reveal the bigger picture in Burma following Cyclone Nargis. This message, which we recently received from a group doing work inside Burma, shares some of the challenges that persist and have been aggrevated by May's disaster.

Since independence in 1948, Myanmar has been beset by political and ethnic crises that have witnessed a country of great human and natural resource potential become one of the poorest in Asia.   

These difficulties have continued through every political era. In the process, conflict has divided many communities; internal displacement is widespread; and health crises such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV-AIDS exist at emergency levels in many parts of the country.

The recent tragedy of Cyclone Nargis has thrown a rare international spotlight on the complexity of humanitarian and socio-political challenges that the people of Myanmar face. Both the resilience of local response and the welcome support of international agencies have demonstrated the potential of what is possible through partnership and cooperation. But it is also important that lessons are learned so that humanitarian delivery, inclusive reforms and social progress are advanced for the long-term.