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More than 150,000 people have been killed and a further 5 million have been made homeless by the Asian tsunami - one third of them children.
In Sri Lanka, more than 30,000 people have died from the tsunami, a tragedy made even worse by that country's 20-year civil war.
War Child Canada is focussing its relief efforts - aid that is TANGIBLE, ACCOUNTABLE, TRANSPARENT and IMMEDIATE - in the eastern coastal city of BATTICALOA. With initial support from The Pindoff Project, War Child Canada is providing emergency humanitarian assistance to the The Butterfly Peace Garden - Tsunami Relief Program.
The Butterfly Peace Garden is a respected Sri Lankan non-governmental organization dedicated to helping the child victims of this unprecedented natural disaster. The Butterfly Peace Garden is located in Batticaloa on the eastern coast of Sri Lanka - one of the most devastated parts of the country - and has been operational in the region for nearly a decade, providing physical and psychological support to Sri Lanka's war-affected children and their families.
More than 250,000 residents of Batticaloa are without food, water, shelter and health care. Thousands of children are severely traumatized, having lost one or both parents, and have witnessed unspeakable horrors. The premises of the Butterfly Peace Garden survived the tsunami but has now become a refuge for thousands of people - many of them children - urgently seeking help and much needed support to enable them to survive and, hopefully, one day return home.
War Child Canada is already helping to make a difference on the ground in Sri Lanka by providing:
- Food, safe water, shelter, sanitation and health care;
- Expert psychosocial support and related interventions to help emotionally traumatized children cope with the tragic effects of the tsunami disaster and its aftermath;
- Financial support to provide building materials and other related items to enable families to rebuild their homes and regain hope.
War Child Canada's partner in Sri Lanka is the Butterfly Peace Garden.
Established nearly 10 years ago, the Butterfly Peace Garden has provided counselling and psychosocial support to children traumatized by the long-standing civil war in Sri Lanka. In fact, the Garden is a model worldwide for its psychosocial programming. The Garden and its staff have been supported in the past by the Canadian government (CIDA), McMaster University, and the McMillan Medical Centre in Toronto. Canadian Paul Hogan - long-term consultant to the Butterfly Peace Garden - has worked at the Garden for many years and is helping to organize relief efforts.
To follow the relief and rehabilitation efforts of the Butterfly Peace Garden in Sri Lanka read Canadian Paul Hogan's Field Diaries from Batticaloa. Paul Hogan is a Canadian artist from Toronto who has been working at the Butterfly Peace Garden for several years.
How you can help...
- $20 will provide food for one week for a family of six.
- $50 will provide plastic sheeting and blankets to give shelter to a homeless family.
- $100 will provide psychosocial counselling to children traumatized by the tsunami.
- $500 will provide construction materials to help a family begin to rebuild their destroyed home.
To donate to the Butterfly Peace Garden Tsunami Relief Program, click HERE.
Donors to this program will be able to follow the progress of War Child Canada's relief and rehabilitation efforts at www.warchild.ca
To find out more about the Butterfly Peace Garden, click HERE.
Photos courtesy of www.alertnet.org, REUTERS and ARKO DATTA, YUSUF AHMAD and BABU.
War Child Canada adheres to The Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief.
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