an inadeqaute but sincere response to the many inquiries from family and friends about how they might help.
Islamabad, November 1, 2005
Dear family and friends,
Thank you for all the emails and calls expressing concern and interest about the earthquake disaster here in Pakistan.
I am sorry not to have responded more completely or coherently in the past days on ways to help, but it’s difficult to begin to describe the breadth and depth of this crisis here in Pakistan and I have been intimidated to even try.
Also, I have been so busy that I literally have been unable to find the time until now to sit down and draft a note to you who I know want more information about how you might help.
There has been so much to do on all levels - it is really overwhelming -immediate urgent medical needs, shelter, food, protection of unaccompanied children, establishment of temporary schools, mental health issues, disability issues. The overall response by Pakistan and the international community has not been adequate.
Tamur has been in the the mountains since the day after the earthquake with UNICEF coordinating the UN response. I was with him for the first week, helping him try to manage the delivery of the first aid shipments in the area. It is difficult to describe how rugged and difficult the terrain is in this area even in the best of times (precarious mountain tracks careening through deep gorges and high mountains) spectacular in the best of times, but terrifying and forbidding in current circumstances.
Delivery of supplies into this area is difficult most of the year in any case, but now with landslides and roads washed out in a hundred places – it has been nearly impossible - except by air. Tamur and I spent the better part of the first week at the military helicopter landing pad helping get supplies onto helicopters and evacuating critically injured patients – mostly women and children who were the most affected – at nine in the morning when the quake hit, women were working in their homes and children were in school - many were simply buried alive.
There has been an acute shortage of helicopters. In one instance in which I was making the decision about when to leave, I personally had to decide to abandon injured children on the mountain side because there was no more room on the flight. It has been devastating to me, but deadly to them.
For the past two weeks, I have been in Islamabad with my children (three boys), working full time with USAID, attending UN coordination meeting, visiting hospitals, organizing shipments of tents and also trying to manage four orphan Kashmiri children, children of a beloved man who works for our family.
Two of the boys are mentally handicapped to start with, (sweet, mute little beings) but now are traumatized after spending a week in the freezing rain with their mother and grandmother and 15 of their school mates buried under the rubble. The boys walked for four days in a state of exhaustion and despair out of the mountain with their father to reach us.
The father then turned around, walked back to his village and carried out his injured daughter on his back. The stories like this are innumerable, daily and growing in number.
Everyone who has called or sent e-mails has asked how they might help.
There are several ways: donate to groups like UNICEF, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, which are all doing good work. Particularly effective, SOS Children’s Villages, a smaller NGO, is housing unaccompanied children. Its web address is: http://www.sos-childrensvillages.org/
But, if you want to help in a very focused, direct, personal way, then let me describe what Tamur and I have agreed to do.
Every day, it seems, I go to the bank to get money to buy more food, oil, kerosene, some clothes, and mainly medicine to help those in our house and those we can get to in the shanty camps being formed here in Islamabad.
But, we have just about exhausted our own resources.
So Mom and Dad and a couple of our friends sent us some money and Tamur and I agreed to use it, as we used our own, to help who we can, as we encounter need.
This little 'fund' is not tax exempt nor can its use be wide spread or uniformly distributed according to the greatest need (which we have no real way to determine in any event) as perhaps the large public charities are able to do, but 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 for food, blankets, cooking pots and oils, fuel, medicines.
If using a contribution in this way appeals to you, then Tamur and I will promise to use any you choose to make wisely and effectively and quickly.
Periodically we would inform you by e-mail of what we see happening in Pakistan, as we work in the relief effort, and how we are using the money you might choose to contribute.
Best Regards,
Lauren
If you would like to contribute to Lauren and Tamur's 'fund' which has been named the Mueenuddin Fund, please make a check out to Dr. Tamur Mueenuddin, mail it to me at 3036 Cambridge Place, NW, Washington, DC 20007 and I will deposit it to a separate account set up at CitiBank.
Lauren will be able to draw funds from the account and she will use the money to buy needed items for as many refugees as possible.
If the demand is such, consideration will be given to normalizing this fund as an LLC in the US and establishing it as a non profit organization with status as a tax exempt entity. At this moment, donations to the Mueenuddin Fund are not tax deductible.
Dear family and friends,
Thank you for all the emails and calls expressing concern and interest about the earthquake disaster here in Pakistan.
I am sorry not to have responded more completely or coherently in the past days on ways to help, but it’s difficult to begin to describe the breadth and depth of this crisis here in Pakistan and I have been intimidated to even try.
Also, I have been so busy that I literally have been unable to find the time until now to sit down and draft a note to you who I know want more information about how you might help.
There has been so much to do on all levels - it is really overwhelming -immediate urgent medical needs, shelter, food, protection of unaccompanied children, establishment of temporary schools, mental health issues, disability issues. The overall response by Pakistan and the international community has not been adequate.
Tamur has been in the the mountains since the day after the earthquake with UNICEF coordinating the UN response. I was with him for the first week, helping him try to manage the delivery of the first aid shipments in the area. It is difficult to describe how rugged and difficult the terrain is in this area even in the best of times (precarious mountain tracks careening through deep gorges and high mountains) spectacular in the best of times, but terrifying and forbidding in current circumstances.
Delivery of supplies into this area is difficult most of the year in any case, but now with landslides and roads washed out in a hundred places – it has been nearly impossible - except by air. Tamur and I spent the better part of the first week at the military helicopter landing pad helping get supplies onto helicopters and evacuating critically injured patients – mostly women and children who were the most affected – at nine in the morning when the quake hit, women were working in their homes and children were in school - many were simply buried alive.
There has been an acute shortage of helicopters. In one instance in which I was making the decision about when to leave, I personally had to decide to abandon injured children on the mountain side because there was no more room on the flight. It has been devastating to me, but deadly to them.
For the past two weeks, I have been in Islamabad with my children (three boys), working full time with USAID, attending UN coordination meeting, visiting hospitals, organizing shipments of tents and also trying to manage four orphan Kashmiri children, children of a beloved man who works for our family.
Two of the boys are mentally handicapped to start with, (sweet, mute little beings) but now are traumatized after spending a week in the freezing rain with their mother and grandmother and 15 of their school mates buried under the rubble. The boys walked for four days in a state of exhaustion and despair out of the mountain with their father to reach us.
The father then turned around, walked back to his village and carried out his injured daughter on his back. The stories like this are innumerable, daily and growing in number.
Everyone who has called or sent e-mails has asked how they might help.
There are several ways: donate to groups like UNICEF, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, which are all doing good work. Particularly effective, SOS Children’s Villages, a smaller NGO, is housing unaccompanied children. Its web address is: http://www.sos-childrensvillages.org/
But, if you want to help in a very focused, direct, personal way, then let me describe what Tamur and I have agreed to do.
Every day, it seems, I go to the bank to get money to buy more food, oil, kerosene, some clothes, and mainly medicine to help those in our house and those we can get to in the shanty camps being formed here in Islamabad.
But, we have just about exhausted our own resources.
So Mom and Dad and a couple of our friends sent us some money and Tamur and I agreed to use it, as we used our own, to help who we can, as we encounter need.
This little 'fund' is not tax exempt nor can its use be wide spread or uniformly distributed according to the greatest need (which we have no real way to determine in any event) as perhaps the large public charities are able to do, but 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 for food, blankets, cooking pots and oils, fuel, medicines.
If using a contribution in this way appeals to you, then Tamur and I will promise to use any you choose to make wisely and effectively and quickly.
Periodically we would inform you by e-mail of what we see happening in Pakistan, as we work in the relief effort, and how we are using the money you might choose to contribute.
Best Regards,
Lauren
If you would like to contribute to Lauren and Tamur's 'fund' which has been named the Mueenuddin Fund, please make a check out to Dr. Tamur Mueenuddin, mail it to me at 3036 Cambridge Place, NW, Washington, DC 20007 and I will deposit it to a separate account set up at CitiBank.
Lauren will be able to draw funds from the account and she will use the money to buy needed items for as many refugees as possible.
If the demand is such, consideration will be given to normalizing this fund as an LLC in the US and establishing it as a non profit organization with status as a tax exempt entity. At this moment, donations to the Mueenuddin Fund are not tax deductible.
posted by Jim Ingram at 8:45 AM
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