“As the recent apocalyptic Myanmar (Burma) hurricane unfolded before our eyes on hundreds of millions of screens, the world watched with impotence. The numbers of those killed in the swath were staggering: over 100,000 (the real number may never be known); over 1.5 million people homeless, without food, shelter, water or medicine. Living in our relative security, try to imagine what it must be like trying to survive such conditions even for a week!

Fortunately, we’ve joined up with Nina & John Cassils, and their very worthy and credible non-profit Myanmar Relief effort. John and Nina have been heroes on this side of the world, selflessly working 20 hour days raising awareness and funds, and making sure that all relief gets to the people in the worst affected areas. Nature’s Path is having the honour of contributing several pallet loads of energy bars that will make a difference between life and death for many families. I heartily urge all who can help with food, medicine, water purification equipment and funds, to support legitimate Myanmar Relief, where every day, every hour counts.”
Arran & Ratana Stephens

“I (Ms. Anonymous) just talked to a friend from UNICEF Myanmar who is working in the disaster area in Myanmar. Just as we heard, it sounded quite exhausting and frustrating to work out there. My UNICEF Volunteer friend has been working in a village called Laputta where over 40,000 people are displaced. UNICEF Volunteer said the resources that actually get there are too little, both human and material. For example, babies who lost their mothers need milk, but they could not find powder-milk to give. There are not enough clean clothing and footwear for people to change. Doctors have been warning about the outbreak of tetanus and other infectious diseases. The price of construction material for shelter is sky-rocketing ($200/10-person shelter). ”

Source: UNICEF Myanmar May 22, 2008 11:16am

Due to its long term presence in Myanmar AZG was able to respond quickly after Nargis struck Myanmar. Operations started on the 5th of May (Yangon Division) and 6th of May (Ayawaddy Division; Ngapudaw and Laputta).

AZG sent 250 national staff from the large existing programmes in Myanmar and used the medical reserves that were already present in the country.

In the first weeks AZG sent out 8 distribution teams to ensure the distribution of food (rice, oil, fish, beans) and non-food items (sheeting, bed nets, blankets, toolkits) and 8 watsan teams to clean up ponds and wells. Distribution was executed at household level, ensuring that all recipients did acquire the necessary items. AZG sent also 28 mobile medical teams to conduct medical consultations, set up feeding centers for malnutrition and opened 8 fixed clinics in the Ngapudaw and Laputta townships.

Five dollars can feed five families for a week
Cheryl Rossi, Vancouver Courier

Nina Cassil’s visit to Myanmar this Christmas will be her 13th visit to Southeast Asia in eight years. She can’t help it. She and her husband fell in love with that part of the world during their travels and can’t stop going back. But the couple’s most recent visit will also be an arduous journey as they travel by bus and boat to see how money from their CW Asia Fund helped aid those in the path of Cyclone Nargis in May. While large non-governmental organizations struggled to get food and medicine to residents of the Irrawaddy Delta, the Cassils delivered 8,000 pounds of donated medicine with relative ease.

“I don’t know why the international community just feels that they can’t work or do anything because of the government, ” Nina Cassils said. “It’s really not the case.” Governments could have easily partnered with aid agencies, including World Vision and Save the Children, which operate in Myanmar, said Cassils, a 54-year-old resident of Point Grey who talked to the Courier Wednesday on the phone from Hong Kong. Working with aid agencies is exactly what the Cassils did. The Clinton Global Initiative invited the Cassils to Hong Kong to talk to international heads of state, non-government organizations, businesspeople and philanthropists about how they can work together to improve education and public health and tackle problems involving energy and climate change in Asia.

Read more …

By Adrian Mack

Maybe they should call her Cyclone Nina. When she sits down for a chat with the Asian Pacific Post at a Kitsilano diner, Nina Cassils’ first act is to start dispensing gifts, like a hand-woven basket from the Rawang community in Burma-Myanmar’s Kachin State, along with a rapid-fire history lesson of the region. All this while simultaneously gushing over the Madonna concert she’d attended with a bunch of girlfriends the night before at BC Place.

The youthful-looking 54 year-old is warm, open, and super-kinetic. She leaps from topic-to-topic without pause, sometimes tripping over her words in the rush to communicate as much information as she can.
When she empties her bag on the table in front of her, it’s a messy snapshot of the work that Cassils and her husband Dr. John Cassils are currently engaged in – along with their friends Susan and Wieland Wettstein – on behalf of their Cassils Wettstein Asia Fund. The Fund has spent the last 10 years improving the lives of indigent children and families in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma-Myanmar, throwing its energies behind libraries, orphanages, schools, hospitals, and other relief efforts.

To date, over $3 million has been raised in direct aid benefiting hundreds – if not thousands – of children and their impoverished families. There’s a handsome spiro-bound booklet produced for potential donors to a pediatric hospital in Angkor, Cambodia – a “ten-year dream,” in Nina’s words. There’s a brochure about the Moo Baa Dek orphanage in Thailand. “We’ve been with them for 10 years,” she says. “There’s about 150 children here and it’s actually become so large it’s its own village. It’s neat.”

Read more …

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.

Read more …

by Colin Hinshelwood

Concierge.com‘s Insider Guide

Last Spring, while Myanmar’s government was refusing foreign aid for the survivors of Cyclone Nargis, local travel companies were among the first to provide relief. When little Ma Pandaw grows up, she can tell her pals she was born on a luxurious cruise ship. She first saw the light of day in its bar, which served as a temporary delivery room after the ship was converted into a mobile hospital to treat victims of the cyclone that swept through Myanmar s Irrawaddy Delta in May.

Ma Pandaw s mother, 17-year-old Khin Mar Oo, named her baby in honor of the ship in which she was born. The Pandaw IV was lent to the cyclone relief effort by Pandaw Cruises, one of dozens of tour companies, hotels, and resorts in Myanmar that responded to the Cyclone Nargis disaster by collecting donations and offering their staff, transportation, expertise, and, in this case, a replica of a nineteenth-century steamboat. We have collected $600,000, mostly from former passengers, said Pandaw Cruises founder Paul Strachan, adding that another $150,000 had been pledged.

Read more …

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