Over the past four months, we have made tremendous progress towards assisting in the recovery from Cyclone Nargis made possible with your generous donations. Although this disaster has faded from the media, the job of rebuilding lives continues to be a challenge.

Along with providing for the most basic needs of simple food, water and temporary shelter, the donated funds have been used for:

• safe shelters for child protection;
• specialty food bars to curb malnutrition;
• critically required antibiotics and other medicines not available in large quantities within the country;
• materials to construct permanent housing; and
• psycho-social support for children and their families.

On August 6th, close to 8,000 lbs of donated medicines and high energy food were successfully air lifted to Yangon from Vancouver with 100% of the goods cleared without interference from government authorities. The value of this shipment exceeded $300,000 CDN.

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By MATT KIELTYKA, 24 HOURS

A Lower Mainland couple is doing their best to make sure Myanmar’s cyclone victims aren’t forgotten. Nina Cassils and her husband John – together with another couple from Calgary – have been raising funds for international organizations since Cyclone Nargis devastated Myanmar in May.

Through private and online donations at cwasiafund.org, Cassils has raised about $740,000 for on-the-ground relief efforts, and she’s gone there to lend a hand herself.
“Imagine a wave coming and continuing through to Surrey, ripping at every tree and building in between and killing women and children,” she said.

Knowing how far a Canadian dollar can go in Myanmar, Cassils set up CW Asia Fund to fund relief efforts through four organizations, including Doctors Without Borders. But as Western society’s memory of the disaster fade away, so do the funds. “It’s a shame because so much more needs to be done,” she said, who is involved with local and international charities. “People don’t even have to give that much. They don’t realize that a dollar can feed an entire family.”

Up to 300,000 people were killed by the cyclone, with another 2.4 million living with the aftermath. Damage has been estimated in the billions of dollars

Hi ,
I was doing logistics stuff last week, but we now have a team of REAL loggies here and they have taken over. My understanding is that ALL our supplies have been received and we have not had anything seized, though I think there may have been a scuffle in the airport I’m not sure it involved us. I heard a similar story about another org. There was one shipment originally consigned to us without notification by an outside org and they did not notify us, but it worked out and we got the goods.

So….the long and short of it is no problems so far. But we are also buying whatever we can here to avoid the issue of the airport, so trying to minimize clearance. I can’t speak for other orgs, but I have not heard of anything major. It seems to be mostly the UN having trouble.

The phones are incredibly difficult these days, even inside Yangon.

I know the media is consumed with the idea of confiscations and frankly I think that is mostly because reporters can’t go to the field to see for themselves the good work happening. So it’s easier and sexier to focus on the rumors and stuff you hear in Yangon.

Hope you are well and glad to hear that you may be sending funds to support local orgs. Just FYI there is a lot of attention to them here and there is a big effort to support them –
they need it!
Thanks again,
Foreign NGO based in Yangon

Thank you! Metta would like to thank all the support that is pouring in from our friends abroad (see bank information below for more donations). We are much encouraged by it, and it keeps us going even in these difficult times. Many of you are asking us for proposals, and we are happy to announce that our staff is in the last stages of finalizing the global budget and proposal!

Metta has been present in the area since the aftermath of the Tsunami in 2004, and this has enabled us to mount a quick response. In Yangon, the Program Director and Communication Officers are working day and night, with additional help from many skillful volunteers. We have been able to mobilize local organizations and people from the area who can act there. Here is a breakdown of the most current number of staff members and volunteers.

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Andrew Kirkwood, Director of Save the Children Myanmar, has been keeping a diary of his life in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) in the days following Cyclone Nargis.

FRIDAY 16 MAY

Ken Caldwell, Save the Children’s Director of International Operations is here with us, so I’ve been in meetings today with the British and American ambassadors, amongst others. There are so many dimensions to this crisis and it seems overwhelming at times. But, at least our mission is clear. Our absolute priority right now is to save children’s lives. I think we’ve been clear and vocal about the dire situation children are in, and the need for urgent action to reach them.

Save the Children has now, less than two weeks after the cyclone, reached more than 120,000 people who have been forced out of their homes by the cyclone, including around 50,000 children – 90,000 people around Yangon and 30,000 in the Irrawaddy delta. And, we’re reaching around 15,000 more people each day. This gives me incredible hope and energy. Today is my last installment. I’ll be relieved not to have this on my list of things to do every day. I usually end up writing at the very end of the day, when I’m impatient to go home – even though the family is usually asleep already. But, I’m really glad I have written it. I think it’s been a good way of staying sane, since it’s forced me to process what’s happened during the day. For most of the past two weeks I’ve had to read my blog every night to someone in our Bangkok office, because I’ve had no other way to send it. At times it was really hard to read it – last Thursday it took me nearly five minutes to read the last paragraph and I was in tears when I finished. It sometimes felt self-indulgent, and I wondered why I was taking time away from my family or from the efforts to save children. But, it’s also been a way for me to stay in touch with friends and family, almost all of whom I’ve had no other contact. I wonder how I’ll feel when I read this in a few months.

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2000 hrs

Thank you! Metta would like to thank all the support that it pouring in from our friends abroad. We are much encouraged by it, and it keeps us going in these difficult times. Many of you are asking us for proposals, but we are responding at the moment on the run, so please trust that we have competent people that are doing all they can, and meanwhile accept our updates you on the situation as it evolves, including the support we have provided and are planning to provide.

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Press Release
Yangon, 13 May 2008 – Yoma Strategic Holdings Limited, SPA Myanmar and First Myanmar Investment Company (private non government related businesses) have taken over responsibility for Cyclone Nargis relief support for two of the hardest hit areas in the Irrawaddy Delta, Ngaputaw Township and Hainggyi Island on the tip of the Delta on Pagoda Point at Cape Negrais.

Initially, as a group, we envisage supporting 20,000 people in these two Delta towns – Cyclone Nargis passed directly through Hainggyi Island, and past just below Ngapudaw. Our initial assessment team returned to Yangon last night from the Delta to report to us on the situation on the ground, and we have established our Relief Command Centre in Yangon at the Grand Meeyahta Suite Apartment 309 to coordinate the main relief effort.

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Two days after we left Myanmar with high hopes and plans for our next few months of aid work, Cyclone Nargis hit the most vulnerable areas of Myanmar along the Iraraddy River. While we were still in Bangkok, John and I began to receive news updates from the field and were forced into a state of shock at the level of devastation and destruction the cyclone had created.

…”Cyclone Nargis” destruction is massive due to 3 – 8 meter surges that went deep inside the country, in effect worse than the Tsunami. Entire villages swept away even 50km behind the coastline… There go your children, there go your wife and there go yourself. We began immediately without assessment of damages to send truckloads full of food, shelter material and a medical team with medicine on a boat to an island. The next truck, boat to another island and so forth. There were many many dead bodies…..

We knew that the logistics and challenges of bring emergency relief aid to the 1.2 million Burmese in remote areas was going to be a challenging undertaking. The best solution for immediate aid was for us to join together with other private donors, local businesses and local NGOs to help those in distress. Returning home through Taipei, we committed to our friends and partners in Myanmar that we would begin fund-raising and co-coordinating relief aid supplies as soon as we arrived home.

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