Danielle Brunon... Donor ...and Activist

Danielle Brunon, the managing Director of BCL Communications, a consultancy located in Paris, France, is a former classmate at Barnard College and Columbia University and a current dear friend of Lauren Mueenuddin.

She responded to the initial news of Lauren's involvement in the October 2005 Pakistan earthquake relief effort with a generous donation to the Mueenuddin Fund, and she became motivated to go further and to offer her friends and colleagues and clients an opportunity to participate also. She wrote the following as a succinct statement of the situation in Pakistan and she plans to send it to her list.

If you're inclined to notify your friends, please make use of any of the material on this blog, including Danielle's.

A "children's catastrophe": Help local relief workers assist Earthquake victims in Pakistan

A human tragedy continues to claim lives each day in Northern Pakistan.

The magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck the Kashmir region on October 8 killed nearly 80,000 people. Almost as many were injured, and tens of thousands of buildings collapsed. An estimated 4 million people have been left homeless, and the very cold winter is approaching the mountainous, precarious area. The aftermath of the quake has been referred to as ‘the children’s catastrophe.’

Lauren Ingram Mueenuddin, an international health and social development consultant married to Dr. Tamur Mueenuddin, a Chief Health Officer for UNICEF, has created the Mueenuddin Fund to help some of the the millions of victims, many of them children, left homeless and vulnerable after the recent earthquake in Pakistan.

Lauren is a Médecins du Monde, World Bank and Save the Children consultant and a graduate of Barnard College and Columbia and Johns Hopkins universities. After having lived in Pakistan off and on for over ten years, she moved to Islamabad in 2003 with Tamur, who was born in Pakistan and reared and educated in the US, and their three sons.

She is currently working to coordinate local efforts, such as the creation of a temporary shelter for the legions of orphans descending into urban centers with no infrastructure to protect them. Since the disaster, Tamur has been reassigned as head of UNICEF earthquake relief efforts in the Kaghan Valley where he coordinates UN actions and conducts emergency medical procedures. Delivery of supplies into the devastated terrain has become almost impossible, except by air, but helicopters are scarce.

Help is urgently needed. Lauren writes in her blog: "There has been so much to do on all levels - it is really overwhelming - immediate urgent medical needs, shelter, food… establishment of temporary schools, mental health issues, disability issues.”International agencies and NGOs such as UNICEF, Mercy Corps, and Save the Children are all present, as is SOS Children’s Villages which is focusing on desperately-needed housing for unaccompanied children. Yet aid is often late in arriving or simply does not arrive at all, and many individuals and families are missed in the scramble for survival. So Lauren and Tamur, having exhausted their own resources, created the Mueenuddin Fund as an attempt to palliate some of these gaps based on their own on-the-ground awareness. By early November, within a few days of its creation, almost $20,000 had been collected by the Fund.

Lauren explains: "… we plan to do what we can to meet immediate needs, for as many, especially children, as we can reach. The greatest immediate needs are shelter from the cold food, blankets, cooking pots and oils, fuel, medicines.

This little 'fund' is not tax exempt nor can its use be wide spread or uniformly distributed, but if making a more personalized contribution appeals to you, Tamur and I promise to use any donation you choose to make wisely, effectively and quickly."

She pledges to keep donors informed as to the use of funds via email reports and her blog.Contributions can be made out by check to Dr. Tamur Mueenuddin and sent c/o James E. Ingram, 3036 Cambridge Place, NW, Washington, DC, 20007, USA, who manages the Fund account.

Resources: Mueenuddin fund blog:

SOS Children's Villages:

UNICEF Pakistan: