A day with the earthquake relief effort
Haiti- One Year After The Earthquake
The Last Effort To Tell You Happy Eid!
Please don't compare modern day Israel with the Nazi's!
Coke Studio, Commendable effort.
Whistleblowers can heave a sigh of relief
What do people do when a 6.3 magnitude earthquake hits your city? You pitch in and help. At The number of volunteers working to help those people effected by the quake is literally number in the tens of thousands. This week I joined in with the Student Volunteer Army, students with extra free time due to the university being closed are putting that time to use helping out residents around the city. I showed up at the 'big top' marque in the students association car park around 10am and the place was running like a well oiled machine. One of our team signed in to get our first job, we all took a couple of pieces of the fruit that had been donated and some home baking contributed by another ad-hoc volunteer group; The Christchurch Baking Army. We were given bottled water (while water has been restored to most of the city, it still requires boiling before drinking) and deodorant- that would come in useful later! I took a vegetarian packed lunch, the note accompanying it informed by it had been donated by two Otago University lecturers.
Our first job was clearing a driveway in Belfast, in the northern part of the city. Liquefaction had pushed silt up through the garden and even through the asphalt in places. That job took a couple of hours and the home owner gave us a bag of apples for our troubles. After a break for some water we went to our next job, staying in the north of Christchurch but heading east to Marshlands, you can guess by the name of that suburb that liquefaction would be a problem. Clearing one front yard of silt took the rest of the afternoon, we were joined by two other volunteer teams and shared our apples with them. City Care workers in the area gave us a hand clearing the pile we dumped on the road side. Back at the big top we were treated to free entertainment and a BBQ. On the walls were print outs of Facebook and Twitter comments thanking the volunteers. Along with the many green Student Volunteer Army t-shirts, many people wore pink 'Comfort Crusaders' t-shirts; this is a group who are visiting the elderly and distributing food. With a community like this, its not question that Christchurch will make it though this disaster.
