Strengthening Humanitarian Crises

Visa for Burma (or is it Myanmar)

Brian has been doing a great job setting up our reponse to the cyclone in Myanmar or Burma. He has been attending all the coordination meetings and has been give us regular sitreps. He has really taken up the ball with a can do attitude and is running with it. I think he is really one in a million I know when I was 22 that I could not have been able to set up a major disaster response like this. He really is an inspiration he has been responding to media keeping upto date on developments and giving us the heads up on a lot of issues as well as monitoring the security situation. We have been looking at different ways to get funds into the country so Brian can start hiring vehicles, staff and buying much needed relief supplies. We put a few thousand dollars onto Brian Visa card and this has allowed him to start the ball rolling. He has set up an office from his hostel room and getting some volunteer support from other backpackers. We will keep funding this way until we can find an alternative funding channel into the country. The Management team has agreed for the intial tranche of $575,000 USD for the response and we expect that about half will come from the institutional donors who are keen to fund us. The first $200,000 will be in Brian's account on Monday so he can start immediate purchase of relief supplies. He already has a number of supply leads at good prices.

Visa's are taking a little longer than expected. Most of the emergency team are out of the country and we are trying to divert to the emergency. Kerry our emergency team programme officer will go as soon as she gets a visa to handle communications and some of the coordination role in the field. Well it's all happening now and really no time to rest. The management team are really happy we are able to get things moving. We should be getting some good photos for the media and marketing this week to help with the fund raising.