|
|
| SPR News |
|
| 12-Jan-2006 |
D-TRAC - Tsunami Relief Thailand |
John |
|
At the beginning of August, I came to Thailand to work as a volunteer in Tsunami disaster relief. More precisely, I worked for two months at an organization called the Tsunami Volunteer Center, leading the IT department and working on some projects, including an online donation system.
Volunteering at TVC was one of the most rewarding times in my life, and I have learned many things, about myself and my personal life as well as the situation concerning Tsunami relief in Southern Thailand. I would like to think that I am a better person because of that experience.
One of the things I have learned is that in some areas that were worst hit by the Tsunami, the rebuilding process has a long way to go. And one of the problems concerning Tsunami relief is that there are many aid organizations, yet there is little coordination between them.
The exact number of organizations helping in Tsunami recovery is largely unknown and can only be roughly estimated, and there is no system in place for coordinating information about these groups and their activities.
I have personally observed how this leads to duplication of aid in some areas: people getting too many houses, boats, etc. To me, that itself is not a problem; some of those people have lost everything in the Tsunami, including their loved ones. Unfortunately this leads to gaps in aid in other areas, where little or no aid is given to Tsunami survivors.
Some aid organizations seem to have little intent to coordinate their efforts with others, sometimes you get the feeling that it is discouraged. There is also a feeling of competition with some organizations, which is very sad because this should not be about them, but about helping the people.
While working at the Tsunami Volunteer Center I met an ex Crisis Corps Volunteer (part of the US Peace Corps) who had worked on a project in Khuraburi Subdistrict, in Phang Nga Province (the worst affected province of Thailand). Their 6-month project gathered information about NGO’s in Khuraburi and created bilingual (English and Thai) reports that were made available to all interested parties.
The information they gathered was used by both a senator and a representative of Phang Nga Province as well as the Governor, staff at the British embassy, the Assistante Projet of the French Red Cross and researchers studying Tsunami recovery efforts from both Germany and New Zealand. It was also used in a two-day workshop in which all stakeholders determined which aid organizations could best help to lead 96 sustainable Tsunami recovery projects on Pra Thong Island.
That project’s success is reflected by Thai government officials requesting that it be expanded to cover the entire province. They are, however, unable to provide the necessary funding.
I joined two ex Crisis Corps Volunteers from the Khuraburi Project to work on something new that we call D-TRAC – Disaster Tracking Recovery Assistance Center. We are already at work, and we have a web site up at http://www.d-trac.org. Reports on aid organizations are already online. You can see what we are doing.
This project is currently being funded out of personal money of its three founders. We already have reports on almost 30 aid organizations online, and they are being translated into Thai as I write this. The web pages on our web site will be available in both English and Thai very soon.
I am merely the maintainer of SpR and I have not worked on it in a long time, but if you ever wanted to contribute for what you have used, and contribute to a worthy cause at the same time, you can do it now. We are trying to do something that is both necessary and that no one else is doing at the moment. If you want to help financially, please follow the Donation link on our web site. Please specify that you are coming from SpR in the comment box.
Other ways to help include volunteering with us, linking to our site, spreading the word about what we are doing, maybe helping us to pursue fundraising options overseas.
I can be reached by email at johannes.e@d-trac.org.
-- John
|
| 31-Dec-2003 |
spr-jb87-rc4 |
John |
|
Some of you may know that other than the spr version on this site, there is a version of spr-jb87-rc4 out. I wanted to clarify where it comes from and why you can't download it from the website.
I created that version of spr shortly before the site went down. I gave it to a few people on IRC, specifically to iceNfire on #mp3chat@undernet. They were supposed to test it and look for bugs and problems. As far as I have been told, there haven't been any.
Unfortunately I never got to put it on the old site before it went down, so it never became ... official, in a way.
So why is it not on here? After the site went back up, I didn't think about it at first; then I could not access the old development files for a while. I want to publish the version that is on my archives, rather than getting an rc4 from someone and being unsure whether it's been tampered with. One never knows.
I'll try to publish rc4 on here within the first two weeks of january '04, when I'll be back at vienna.
The interesting thing about rc4 is that it eliminates some of the problems people have been reporting when using rc3 with mIRC 6.x. That's why I want to publish it on the site in the first place.
-- John
|
|
|
|
