Karachi Relief Trust

+ Reply to Thread

Results 1 to 5 of 5

An email I've received from a friend:

My friends, colleagues, classmates

As most of you know, I am currently in Pakistan involved with the relief of flood victims. Being on the ground for the last two weeks, I have personally witnessed utter hopelessness. This catastrophe has taken out almost quarter of the nation, and that too in areas where the poorest of the poor lived. Their only assets, if lucky, were a mud house and a couple of cattle. All of that is washed away now.

What moved us:
Three weeks ago, I came across a camp where I saw children and elderly laying almost lifeless curled up on the ground. They were dying of dehydration and lack of food. To everyone's worst fears, Cholera, Dengue Fever and other water born disease outbreaks had begun. One cannot begin to put in words the feeling of watching a child with Cholera on her last breath while a mother's screaming eyes gaze back at you for a miracle. Although it was too late to help the little girl Shabana, I realized that there are many others I can help.

Along with several young professionals, using our own resources, we mobilized an initiative to provide the very core of survival - clean drinking water.

What we are doing:
The ideal product to provide consistent, on the source, drinkable water for such crisis is a purification unit called 'Life Straw Family' (www.lifestraw.com). World Health Organization labeled it as a wonder product that can purify water for over a year. We have teamed up with a very reputable Non-government-organization called Karachi Relief Trust (http://www.karachirelief.org) to procure and distribute this product to the the flood victims. In a very short time, we have distributed enough lifestraws to sustain hundreds of families through the ongoing floods. These units will last them through the much more severe long-term aftermath expected to last for years.

Our program is working. However, with 20 million people uprooted, there is no shortage of suffering. We are a drop in bucket, but a drop indeed. We must not only keep this effort going, but also expand it further into the extreme rural areas. However, our small but dedicated group is coming close to depleting US$60,000 of our own funds to keep purchasing the units, and also need additional savvy volunteers on the ground.

While I know that most of your are physically not able to volunteer, you may be in a position to help extend our momentum via financial assistance.

Cost and lifespan:
Each Lifestraw Family unit costs us $29. It last three years and can support multiple families at one time.

Transparency and usage:
Our team just setup a paypal account. The monies are used strictly to pay for the product. All other administrative and operating expenses will remain out-of-pocket. I am also personally involved overseeing the management of the funds. To keep this process transparent, we are also setting up a report that will show number of units distributed by location, names of families along with their National ID numbers.

How you can help:
You can access our dedicated page on PayPal http://bit.ly/TTTHM and make your donation online.

Once you have done so, PLEASE either forward me your PayPal confirmation email or let me know the date and amount you deposited so that I can keep a tight track. We are not a hi-tech organization to build an accounting system, but are dedicated to this cause and the optimal usage of every penny.

An alternate route is that you can simply let me know how much you want to contribute. Since I am currently on the ground, I will gladly put in money on your behalf. We can sort out the financials when I see you next.


Lastly, if I could only show you what I have seen, and media footage does not even come close to hair-raising screams of mothers, you would better understand my sense of urgency (see attached pictures of the ground reality and how our team is helping). Last night, another 20 villages were lost to the new rains. Their children (those that survived) are without a roof and are thirsty this morning. We cannot provide the roof, but can surely keep them breathing with what we all take for granted - Water.

Our stock of Lifestraw is running low. Please share this message and the urgency with any of your caring family and friends. We can all make a difference one drop at a time.

Thank you all.

Flood relief iii.jpgSleeping.jpgFlood relief i.jpgFlood relief vii.jpgOur team.jpgFlood relief ii.jpgFlood relief v.jpgFlood relief vi.jpg

Cass and friend,

If Life Straw does not incclude in its humanitarian efforts extensive family planning information and programs, then all they are doing is setting those people up for more suffering in the next environmental disaster, partly provoked by their own chaotic overpopulation and environmental degradation. The growing wildfires, droughts, floods and catastrophic storms around the World demonstrate that planet Earth cannot and will not support a relentlessly growing population and its ecocidal economic expansion.

Originally Posted by nrdthxpr

Cass and friend,

If Life Straw does not incclude in its humanitarian efforts extensive family planning information and programs, then all they are doing is setting those people up for more suffering in the next environmental disaster, partly provoked by their own chaotic overpopulation and environmental degradation. The growing wildfires, droughts, floods and catastrophic storms around the World demonstrate that planet Earth cannot and will not support a relentlessly growing population and its ecocidal economic expansion.

I thought about removing your post entirely, but in some respects agree with the theme. While it is true that we live in a finite world and need to look for long term solutions, it does not mean we should ignore the present. If people are suffering, they should receive a helping hand. Go back and study Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The fact remains that we need to focus more on the distribution of resources and the profit motive. Why can we choose to live in a world where one person makes 100m a year at the same time 100m people suffer from hunger? That is the more important question. Why is there not a global effort to help the suffering and less fortunate? Just imagine for a minute a peace treaty amongst the 100 largest countries (that would be just about most of them) where everyone agreed to stop funding their military and instead spent that money on productive, humanitarian and sustainable initiatives? WOW that would be some change I could believe in.

Originally Posted by Cass

I thought about removing your post entirely, but in some respects agree with the theme. While it is true that we live in a finite world and need to look for long term solutions, it does not mean we should ignore the present. If people are suffering, they should receive a helping hand. Go back and study Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The fact remains that we need to focus more on the distribution of resources and the profit motive. Why can we choose to live in a world where one person makes 100m a year at the same time 100m people suffer from hunger? That is the more important question. Why is there not a global effort to help the suffering and less fortunate? Just imagine for a minute a peace treaty amongst the 100 largest countries (that would be just about most of them) where everyone agreed to stop funding their military and instead spent that money on productive, humanitarian and sustainable initiatives? WOW that would be some change I could believe in.

Thankyou for tolerating my dissent.

The international corporate power structure cannot maintain itself without a constantly growing population of poor people who are vulnerable to wage and debt exploitation; and as long as that population is available to them, wage and debt slavery and environmental destruction will go on until the planetary biosphere everyone depends on collapses and we all collapse with it. That is what is happening today and every day and very few people are doing anything to actually stop it, instead trying to alleviate the symptoms, like disaster relief when the inevitable environmental consequences arrive unannounced, as in the Pakistan floods. But the system that causes such disasters goes on regardless, taking full advantage of the massive overflow of wandering destitute people by refusing to raise wages as long as such a mass of people are competing for jobs of any kind anywhere.

But if all women were granted the legally protected right to decide if and when to birth their children, the vast majority would choose no more than one, two or three children and the population explosion would come to a grinding halt and no more masses of poor people would be available to exploit. Instead, a smaller and better educated work force could better organize to demand living wages. Unless and until this happens, the Earth is a self-doomed planet.

Thus, the people of Pakistan need BOTH disaster relief AND family planning programs. Why aren't they getting it? Look who their leaders are - all men, after they assassinated brave Benezir Bhutto who might have saved them from their own macho madness.

But the most profound example of this overpopulation syndrome is the dispute between Israel and the people of Palestine. Both populations are growing and need space to settle, but there is none on those postage stamp territories, so they slyly invade each other illegally, each claiming approval from God or Allah and their rage increases. But are those trying to make peace even mentioning the source of the problem? Oh no, that might insult some one's religion! So, the populations keep on growing and war keeps on threatening as the last resort. It's madness, and it's the history of the human race --

but not for much longer. The worsening wildfires, droughts, floods and storms around the World signal the living biosphere we all depend on is in crisis, and as long as the coal-fired power plants and jet planes keep on spewing out pollution to serve the growing human population, it can only get worse. The poem I posted "Psychotic" expresses it concisely.

Well, whatever happened to Pakistan? Back to suicide bombings by moslem factions, >>still overpopulating like the Earth is infinite<<<. Only half are actually governed, plus they have nuclear weapons.... The US is still trying for an honorable way out of Afghanistan. Stability in the area is a joke with their 7th century warlord and kill cult thinking. Psychotic.
http://www.cosmosmith.com/human_population_crisis.htm

http://www.yourmedievalfuture.com/?p=276#more-276

http://www.albartlett.org/articles/a..._bartlett.html