Tsunamis & Donations

I haven’t written much about the tsunami which hit asia last week. Mostly i’m not sure what to say. www.indy has run a bunch of features on various aspects of the Tsunami. It just didn’t feel like i knew what i could do. At times like this i sometimes think about going in to international relief work. It’d be exciting, get to travel places, deal with tense situations, conflicts with local officials, logistical nightmares with urgent deadlines, injured people, etc… The only problem is, most international aid comes from questionable sources, i.e. USAID, etc… Surely they need somebody to come in and set up communications systems, the question is, how does one find such a job. My guess is it’s mostly word of mouth, but maybe they post on craigslist like everybody else.

I was talking to my mom, joyce plath, and she had me give a donation to Sarvodaya the Sri Lankan NGO which is coordinating much of the relief effort there. She wants to go join Architecs Without Borders and move back to south asia, but has the same problem, where does find that kind of work.

Perhaps the great blogosphere in the sky will answer my question. :-)