Cyclone Aila Relief work
I work for the Penn State Chapter of Association for India’s Development (AID) and we are accepting donations for any kind of help for the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Aila cyclone that struck West Bengal earlier this week.
AP Photo by Pavel Rehman
Cyclone Aila struck the coasts of Bangladesh and West Bengal, India killing more than 200 people and destroying 180,000 homes. Over 3 million people have been displaced as per the estimates.
The govt help is as always not adequate. Association for India’s Development (AID) is partnering with local NGO partners to provide food, water and shelter. AID has already disbursed $21,000 to one of the partner NGO Baikanthapur Tarun Sangha (BTS) for this work.
If you would like to help the relief work please donate to AID All India Relief Fund.
Click here if you would like to follow the regular updates (from people working right in the middle of it and not from seasoned journalists)
Cyclone Aila in the press : BBC | The Daily Star | CNN | ToI | The Hindu
Also awaiting Ankur’s photos from the cyclone affected areas.
Update:
Please visit this link – Cyclone Aila Updates – for the latest updates on the cyclone relief work, by Amit Arora, the new president of AID Penn State chapter.
I respect you man.
There is a drive in my office too to collect the funds for the purpose.
Natural calamities can’t be avoided; but helping hands go a long way in getting back to life.
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Yea I heard of this, you’re doing a gr8 job, I’ll tell my hubby ’bout this n we’ll see what we can do. Thanks for informing.
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Kudos to you, my friend !!! It’s wonderful the part you’re playing in the efforts for betterment …
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Keep up the good work Kokonad!
will def get in all my friends too to contribute..
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I REALLY appreciate your effort really but I think a more direct approach than donating to a third party NGO would have been more efficient……
good work, dude…. and i respect the fact that u r working for such a cause. hope the situation is getting better…?
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#BrownPhantom, Rads, Adisha, Indyeah, TrueBlueGuy, Ashwathy
Thank you SO SO much for your comments. I have been away for the weekend – sorry for the delay in getting back to you wonderful people. Yes, any thing will help them, anything! For starters, even you can set up a widget with this image and this link – to enable visitors on your blog to donate directly to the NGO.
TrueBlueGuy, welcome to my blog! And thank you so much for commenting. I am on the team that works in AID – and our job here from abroad is to fund NGOs in India by raising money here in the US. That’s the least we can do for the less privileged in our country.
I too strongly believe that direct help is the best help. Keeping that in mind, we try to do the best we can from abroad here. We audit NGOs we support twice a year and are very detailed about it – we also perform site visits to see how and if money we send is being used appropriately. We truly understand your concern about money going into wrong hands – and we appreciate your love for humankind to make sure that this doesn’t happen! However, over the last 20 years or so, we have formed a good reputation in India as a responsible NGO. Unfortunately, that’s all I have to offer to you – my word! 
Anyway, here’s an update on the relief work at the site
Thank a lot Koke. People can follow the updates @ http://aidindia.org/main/content/category/36/281/407/
Amit´s latest blog post – Cyclone Aila updates
Hi.. I was back home when the cyclone struck.. came back to kolkata and realised really how bad things are.. can you please direct me to a person / NGO here in Kolkata to whom i can send my donation?..
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#Amit:
You are welcome, bhai!
#Gauri:
Thank you so much for your support, Gauri. We all really appreciate it! Mukti (http://muktiweb.org/aila/) is one of the NGOs working for Aila relief directly – they are working on site.