Disaster Remembrance Week :: From the Salmon

Disaster Remembrance Week

One year ago, South Asia was hit by a wave the likes of which the world hadn’t seen in my lifetime. When it subsided, it left hundreds of thousands dead or displaced.

It seems so long ago, doesn’t it?

Truth be told, it’s been a hell of a year. The tsunami, genocide in Sudan, Operation Murambatsvina in Zimbabwe, food emergencies in the Sahel, hurricanes in the Gulf, an earthquake in Pakistan....

There’s a term used in the relief and development community for the effect that years like this have: “compassion fatigue.” It’s a term that should be an oxymoron, but is all too real. As each horrifying disaster tears at our hearts, as we open our checkbooks yet again, as we say prayers for yet another situation so far beyond our ability to control or solve, we run the risk of incrementally hardening ourselves to a world of pain and need.

This year was also a year that saw an interesting new relationship between these types of disasters and the internet. The growth of blogs and the maturation of collaborative online references like wikis brought with them a new kind of activism, a new kind of storytelling, and a powerful new clearinghouse for information.

One of those new efforts was led by The World Wide Help Group, a grassroots partnership of bloggers, programmers, and others who came together to create the South East Asian Earthquake And Tsunami blog, wiki and database after the disaster struck a year ago. Since then, they have created similar resources for Hurricane Katrina (blog, wiki) and the earthquake in Pakistan (blog, wiki).

On the one year anniversary of the tsunami, The World Wide Help Group has called for a Disaster Rememberance Week. This is a week to look back, to admit how easily we let some of these stories fall off our radar, and to see if we can fight our tendency for compassion fatigue by finding a way to continue to give.

We’re traveling later this week, so I won’t be able to turn this into a series of posts. But in a season when we celebrate giving, I hope you might take a few moments to find a need and to do what you can to help meet it.

If you need some resources for connecting with charitable organizations, here are three pages from The World Wide Help Group’s disaster wikis:
- South East Asian Tsunami
- Hurricane Rita
- Pakistan Earthquake

In addition, InterAction features lists of US aid groups involved in bringing help to various areas:
- South East Asian Tsunami
- Hurricane Katrina
- Earthquake in Pakistan
- Sudan
- Niger and the Sahel region

As always, I’d encourage you to do some research before you give. Organizations like InterAction are a good place to start, because they require a certain standard from their member agencies. Other groups like Charity Navigator can help you learn more about the stewardship of individual charities. If you’d like recommendations, let me know, and I’ll see if I can help you with your search.

I’ll admit that I suffer from compassion fatigue as much as the next person. I’ve fallen far short of my desire to write more in depth about some of these needs. And often, I’ve let writing substitute for giving.

As we look back at what the world has been through this year, here’s a sampling of some of what I’ve written over the past ten months (I don’t have any tsunami posts, since I started this site in February and since I shamefully neglected to write any follow-up posts):

1 Ripple from “Disaster Remembrance Week”

Kevin says:

December 27, 2005 at 10:12 am

The scary thing is that disasters like this are only going to get worse and more frequent. As the climate continues to warm and the ice continues to melt, it’s really going to hit the fan. I have the feeling that this year was just a trial run. Sigh. It would be nice if we had a President who was concerned with something besides endless wars against shadows. We really don’t have three years to wait on a real leader to do something about these issues.

OK. Back to post-Christmas cheer.

From the Salmon