The most powerful Hurricane in the Caribbean in a decade passed over Haiti with devastating results. AMURT has a large team in Haiti who from the first day fanned out to remote communities to assess and assist. You can donate for these efforts here. Read more
In September 2014, the kashmir region witnessed disastrous floods across majority of its districts caused by torrential rainfall. About 500 people died during the floods, one million affected. AMURT distributed food to affected people.
AMURT & AMURTEL relief teams are working on five islands serving tens of thousands of people and are expanding operations to assist more communities affected by Super-Typhoon Haiyan, known locally as Yolanda. Read more
More than 1 million Syrians fleeing the war have poured into Lebanon so far: more than to any other country. AMURT Lebanon extends emergency relief to Syrian refugees and helps them to get their children back to school. Read more
In Philippines local AMURT & AMURTEL volunteers responded to massive flood in early August near Manila. In the last couple of weeks they distributed cooked food, bread, drinking water and hygiene items to more than 10,000 people in and around Manila. Read more
An 9.0 magnitude earthquake and a 10 meter high tsunami wave hit northeastern Japan at 2.46pm on Friday March 11. Thousands of people have have died and hundreds of thousands are affected.Members of AMURT & AMURTEL are in the coastal towns of Sendai, Tamajo, Shichigahama and Tagajo serving the most vulnerable elderly in clearing their houses and providing psycho-social programs for the internally displaced people in the camps managed by the local authorities.
AMURT & AMURTEL continue to work with local city officials in Shichigahama and Utsunomia to assist the elderly get back to normalcy by helping clearing debris from their homes. Giampiero Iuvara, The AMURT disaster coordinator in Japan, reports “The Japanese are an amazing people, culturally trained to the virtue of patience and collective harmony, and their composure and wisdom gave us a taste of their mature humanity. This is a community prepared to the tsunamis. Imagine that one pensioner told me he had experienced three of them in his life but even he couldn’t imagine one of such power, capable of sweep away in few minutes the 25% of the his town”. The team recounts the story of one hero who acted in time to warn his neighbors and, in so doing, saved 65 lives.
The team makes daily visits to the refugee centers in the area to provide counseling to help people cope with mental trauma. They also organize physical activity such as stretching and yoga exercises . Lastly, the team leads children’s activities, such as playing games, singing songs and organizing soccer games. The city officials have been very impressed and have provided an office for the team within one of the refugee centers.
Sabin Thompson, an American volunteer, writes – “The survivors of the tsunami have blankets, but they need people to warm up their gloomy outlook to the future and give them hope. They have food, but they need people to nurture their hearts. They are surrounded with other human beings, but they need someone willing to stop and hear their story.”
