Interview with WV on Myanmar

Here's an interview at CT with Laura Bank, an emergency communications officer with World Vision, on the most recent news in Myanmar and how World Vision is bringing aid to the devastated areas.

She said, "As soon as the storm ended, we were able to begin distributing rice, clean water, fuel, rebuilding supplies, and blankets—the basic things that we wanted to get to people as soon as we could. Because we'd been there for so long, we were able to purchase goods locally and in bulk, and try to start some of the relief efforts on a very small scale."

On what they need in terms of giving:

"Based on early estimates (we're still getting the final assessment from our team), we're looking at about $3 million that would help serve close to a quarter of a million people over the next 30 days. So that would be a full-scale humanitarian aid effort in the short term to try to begin taking care of immediate needs. But speaking long term, World Vision has no plans to leave the country. We hope to continue to work in country, as we have for four decades, to help them rebuild after this terrible storm."

And on WV's "child-centric" approach:

"One of the things that makes World Vision unique as an NGO is that we are 'child-centric.' We were founded with the biblical call to work with women and children—to protect them and to be an advocate for them. And we're very concerned about the children that we have.

"We have about 10,000 children in the center of the destruction in the five regions that have been marked as the hardest hit, and we have 42,000 children total in Myanmar. We're concerned for them because in a natural disaster, children in particular are very vulnerable to disease. They're vulnerable to dehydration. And they're also vulnerable to the emotional stress and the toll that takes when a little child has to go through a situation like this."

Again, to give money to help in the aid process, click here.