Good Works

It has been reported by CNN and other news media outlets that in the wake of the tsunami disaster in Asia, people have been donating money to charities in droves. One American charity featured on Foxnews said they had received more money in one hour then they normally receive in a six month period. People are emptying their wallets, their bank accounts and their piggy banks to donate to this incredibly worthy cause. The general public in Britain has donated more than their own government is forking out. Australian donations have been both meteoric and record shattering. In the first few days Jackie Chan donated $65,000, rockers Linkin Park donated $100,000 and yesterday Sandra Bullock donated one cool million dollars to the Red Cross Tsunami Appeal (the same amount she gave after 9/11). The sheer numbers being donated are eclipsed only by the horrific number of dead that also keeps rising. People are for the most, trying to do good works. Unfortunately for every white hat worn in the wild wild west, there is usually a black hat on the horizon. A Canadian student tricked a freelance journo in the US to donating the domain name tsunamirelief.com by purporting to be from a non-profit organisation. The journo was subsequently a little taken aback to see that the same student was auctioning the name on Ebay for $50,000. (His mother has come out and said he always intended to donate the money to one of the charities, however he has since withdrawn the site from auction). There are unsubstantiated reports of child trafficking in some of the remote regions, stories of people walking into hospitals and taking children with them. (I sincerely hope this turns out to be false or one of those urban legends that pops up in times of disasters but MSN are reporting that a Swedish boy may have been taken by a pedophile). And the blank resignation I see on the faces of the survivours, I am also starting to see reflected by the journalists sent to these areas. Hardened men and women - who have seen the worst we can do to one another – are visibly crumbling under the sheer weight of the day to day horror and devastation they are witnessing.

For those of us not in the trenches, who watch from the sidelines and the relative safety of our couches and who can do nothing else except review our budgets and see if we can give just a little bit more, do these numbers actually mean anything? Do they really hit home? Or is the sheer hugeness of the number of dead – almost one hundred and fifty thousand – too abstract for us to conceptualise? I can ruminate on that number and by itself it almost means nothing. It is tragic but it doesn’t really hit home. It’s just this really big hideous number. It isn’t until the tragedy is personalised that we feel an immediate emotion – usually gut wrenching sadness - in the heroic stories of people risking their lives for strangers, the shots of orphaned children in hospital beds and the shellshocked expression of the Swedish Prime Minister as he struggles to hold back the tears at a news conference. Our sub-conscious protects us from a true understanding of that number, because if we could process it we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. Instead, it instructs us to be a little nicer to our kids, smile more at strangers on the street or on the train and to give until it freaking hurts. And with the dollar figure Australians are projected to give currently thought to end up over 100 million, our good works can be said to be very good indeed.


Oxfam – 1800 034 034
Red Cross – 1800 811 700
Care – 1800 020 046
World Vision – 13 32 40
UNICEF – 1300 884 233