I contributed some monetary support to the American Red Cross’ effort for the tsunami victim via Amazon.com. It’s not much but regretfully, that is what I can afford at the moment. But truly, money is not everything.
My neighbor’s friend is doing more than what I have done. He is currently in Sri Lanka and is offering manpower (he is currently reading medic in the UK) to improve the situation in the devastated paradise. His website is at http://www.kilimedical.com/. There are pictures of victims on site.
Please donate to help. There are various channels to do this. A simple browse through the internet should lead you to some reputable sites. If you need a hint on where to start, Wikipedia has a wonderful list of ongoing efforts for the tsunami victims.
Beware however of fraud. If you are unable to differentiate between a real effort and fraud page, simply ignore the less convincing organization and furnish instead to any reputable organization like the American Red Cross or the UNHCR.
If for some reason you don’t believe the United Nations due to some political belief, there are other organizations but be sure that the page URL starts with https, not simply http. Notice the letter s behind the http – an URL with https is much more secure than a typical page. This also applies to online shopping. You may donate to pages that fail to have a secure page but the risk of fraud is higher one way or the other.
If you are interested in donating to the effort in Malaysia, the Malaysian media The Star has a page for that purpose. But if it were up to me, I rather have you donate to relief bodies in Indonesia or Sri Lanka. Those nations are the ones that truly need help. But who am I to say. I’m not directly affected and those that are affected are feeling the pain all the same.
p/s – the UN has a pdf file on contribution report.
