After our return from the camping trip we heard that a local charity was looking for volunteers to help out with the relief work to aid the tsunami survivors in South-East Asia. I went to help sort donations for a few hours and have barely made it home since. There is a lot of concern here, as so many expats stem from the affected region and have family or friends there.
Dubai Aid City is a Dubai government organisation that liaises with Red Crescent and Unicef. Since the collection centre number has been advertised over New Year donations of clothes, food and medicine have been flooding in. We sort and repack everything and arrange for transport to the Red Crescent warehouses at Jebel Ali port where containers are either shipped or flown out from the local airport.
The collections will be going on till the end of the month, when we hope that the immediate needs will be cared for. It's great to see so many people taking leave from work or coming in the evenings: We had the boy scouts, the Philippines Community centre, workers from the paint factory and local building sites, as well as logistical support from companies lending trucks to move stuff out to Jebel Ali port to cafes donating lunch for the volunteers to the building manager supplying us with bottled water and photocopiers.
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