WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE:
There could have been created volunteer centres where the victims of the tsunami (especially children and teenagers) could access freely the internet (with the help of an assistant) and:
-receive emotional support, realize the whole world cares and wants to help them, get in contact with other young people around the world and receive their thoughts of love and solidarity. This could help them overcome the strong depression they feel now.
- start some online courses with teachers all around the world (online volunteers) and learn because many schools from South Asia were destroyed and children and young people have no place where to go, they are isolated and lonely and cannot continue their classes for the moment.
-ask directly for the material help they really need: they should have a password and access to a special website where they should post their needs.
- receive free online consulting as many diseases are about to spread in the region and a quick diagnostic may save lives (we also need online doctors volunteers)
-learn how they could protect themselves and avoid being the victims of child traffic (a great problem now) and maybe report missing persons to the international organizations that are now in the area.
Also, in some countries we were not allowed to collect any humanitarian aids as only money donations were accepted. We wished that the transport for the humanitarian aids was free of charge so that we could have sent directly a few things to Asia.
We learned pretty soon that donations were no longer needed as there had been raised enough money. Although these were good news, I felt bad because our mission of citizens of the world shouldn’t have been limited to fundraising. I would have liked to help in a more concrete way-for example get in touch with a child-victim and develop a personal relation with him: send him needed things , encourage and support him, help him see he is not alone. This could have been achieved if international organizations would have started a “become a trusted friend” program and would have collaborated with firms to facilitate Internet access and reduce costs for mail delivery and international phone calls between Asia and the rest of the world.
