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Thomas Schwarz
March 8th, 2010
Every year, there is a „Teletón” in Chile, a big TV-show with loads of artists, celebrities and Chileans, who donate money. During a normal year this money would be donated for needy children and their parents. Critically ill people and the disabled could afford treatments which would be otherwise beyond their reach. But this weekend the Teletón was all about the recent earthquake. True to the motto “Chileans help Chileans” the event raised more than 30 billion Chilean Pesos. That is just short of 60,000 million US Dollars.
There is help and solidarity among the Chileans everywhere. In supermarkets, young people are packing aid-packages for the victims of the quake. You will get your windshield washed at the traffic lights and the money will get to the needy. There are shops giving discounts on their prices and donating the difference to the original price to the relief-effort. The whole country is laced with national flags. On Sunday they all flew on half-mast to show the solidarity of the nation with the victims of the quake. Public busses show appeals to come forth and help, not only with flags, but with tangible deeds as well. All this impresses me a lot, especially when I hear that even those, who do not own a lot, share with the needy.
The CARE-Packages are ready
There were more than 200 aftershocks since the devastating earthquake on Saturday one week ago. We could feel some of them here in Santiago de Chile. Sometimes during the day, sometimes in the middle of the night. Many people are still in a state of shock. They talk a lot about the quake, with neighbours, friends and their family and show around pictures of buildings and whole villages in ruins, as if it helps them to get over the shock. My colleague Axel Rottländer describes the feelings of the people in the southern region, where the epicentre of the earthquake was, with one simple sentence: “They are still afraid”. And while the Chileans try to find back to their everyday live, one week after the devastating quake, Axel and our partners from the Foundation for Development in Chile are preparing the first transport of aid items for Sauzal. They want to start on Tuesday with more than 200 CARE packages and strong plastic tarps that will protect affected people from the rain. Tents are hard to come by in this country. A truck has been ordered for the transport and is ready for loading.
Ban Ki-moon, Clinton and Westerwelle
There is a lot of help reaching the country, from friends all over the world. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the General Secretary of the UN, Ban Ki-moon and on Sunday German Secretary of State Guido Westerwelle came visiting. But there are still villages like Sauzal that have been forgotten. These villages still lack everything. Maybe the pilots of the international guests flew them over some of those villages to show that Chile still needs help – from Chileans as well as from their international friends.
Contact:
Thomas Schwarz (in Chile)
Mobile: +49 160 745 93 61
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