Thousands of residents from north-east Japan with no belongings and nowhere to go are crammed into evacuation centres. They are living a nightmare in which the only priority is survival.
It’s hard to strike a positive note in light of such destruction, but the response of the international community in Japan’s hour of need has been heartening. Offers of help from countries as diverse as Britain, Afghanistan and the Maldives should remind us that humanitarian assistance isn’t just a matter of rich countries helping poor countries, but of human to human solidarity.
A special film partnership with ITV brings me to Leogane – to meet the children who’ve been central to a landmark project for Save the Children. Designed as a way for children’s voices to be heard, this is the first time film has been incorporated into Save the Children’s emergency response.
Getting this message out is hard – cholera has not been seen in Haiti for between 60 and 100 years, and myths and rumours are quick to spring up.
One of the many ways Save the Children is educating the public is through songs in Creole to teach children how to prevent cholera, how to recognise the symptoms and what to do next.
In the early stages of an earthquake response, there are plenty of challenges – not least getting access to affected people, bringing in enough supplies, and dealing with ravaged infrastructure.
But the actual solutions are pretty simple – people needed food, clean water, basic supplies. As time progresses, the answers to the questions of what will happen to the 1.3 million people living in the tented camps are not so easy to find
It’s hard to believe that 6 months have passed since the earthquake in Haiti. Hard for a variety of reasons. Firstly, (apart from the sudden flurry of media attention inspired by the passing of an arbitrary period of time: 6 months), the collective suffering felt by Haitian people and the hard work of organisations like Save the Children have fallen off the radar of international media interest.
We’ve been working with a group of kids from Leogane this week. The children have all lost family and friends. Olwine is 13 years old. Her best friend died in her house when it collapsed. Nenel (17), lost 2 sisters and his little brother the same way.
A powerful earthquake measuring 7.1 hit remote Yushu county, 500km south-west of the provincial capital Xining in Qinghai in the early hours of Wednesday 14th April. This in itself is not unusual as the plateau of Qinghai is an earthquake prone area but this quake has had some devastating effects.
When we arrived in sunny Sherborne, West Dorset on the afternoon April 9, we were greeted by beautiful sunshine, stunning sandstone terraces and a breath of fresh air. Why hadn’t we booked a B&B to stay for the weekend?
This was stop three on our election campaign trail, and the warm welcome – though uplifting – re-ignited the nervous energy:
“You’ve done this before, it’ll be fine…”
“The weather’s so nice, will people turn up?”
“Will the candidates pay anything more than lip-service to our issues?
When the earthquake struck Haiti on January 12 affecting almost a million people, the world’s thoughts and compassion poured to the small island nation. As celebrity telethons in the US and UK helped raise millions of dollars for Haiti, Thailand also managed to raise around 15 million dollars.
None, however, expected any of the 15 million to come from the slum community of Klong Toey – after all poor people are not seen as able to give assistance but only to receive.
