Bethany Well

UPDATE: Official death toll has increased to 78,000 and another 56,000 are still missing.

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I was invited by a contact over at World Vision to sit in on a conference call with the President of World Vision, the SE Asia Director (Thailand) and some of the field officers in Myanmar. I don’t sit in on many conference calls, but I imagine a lot of you do every week. I felt a little corporate for a bit. Anyways, here are some of the things that I jotted down as I was listening.

Status Update

• WV is getting trucks down to the Irrawaddy Delta region
• 1/2 million of people affected are children
• Price of food has doubled
• WV still doesn’t have approval to fly in additional aid
• already had supplies ready for hurricane season before the cyclone hit.
• served 100,000 people
• 75% in Yangon
• 25% in Delta region
• due to difficulties in transportation
• hope to serve 500,000 over next 6 months

Relief effort inside Myanmar

• Cyclone came with little warning, residents were surprised
• 1/5 of rice crop will be lost
• effect on myanmar will be much longer lasting than the tsunami was to sri lanka or indonesia because the storm went far more inland and this is a much poorer nation

Distribution of Relief Supplies

• WV is controlling their own distribution of aid (very rare!)
• WV received permission to directly distribute because of their pre-existing relationship with the government, something that most other organizations (and countries) do not and did not have.

Written by: RjL on May 16, 2008.