BEIRUT DISASTER APPEAL

Rebuilding communities.......together

You will be aware of the disaster in Beirut, due to the explosions in the port area on the 4th August which have killed more than 200 people and injured an estimated 5,000 people. Homes have been rendered uninhabitable and up to 300,000 people are now homeless according to initial reports.

I can confirm that sadly Antoine Barmaky, the President of the RC Hammana-Upper Metn, one of the six Rotary clubs in Beirut, died in the explosion.

We have seen on the news since, apart from the tremendous damage from the explosions, there are great political problems alongside the fight against Covid-19. We are reaching out through our Rotary contacts and Disaster Aid International partners to see how we can help.

Establishing exactly what support is required, in full consultation with local partners, is vital but launching the fund-raising efforts to help is the priority. As always, we will be completely transparent and funds will be released timeously but only when we are fully satisfied that accountability measures are safely in place.

Possible support could be

Sanitisers and PPE to help fight Covid-19 (we recently
supplied to Brazil)
Life Boxes– to replace lost essential household equipment
Tents – For families to shelter
Water Purification – to ensure they have clean water

Welcome to Disaster Aid UK & Ireland

Disaster Aid UK & Ireland is one of the founding partners of Disaster Aid International (DAI). DAI is an international organisation, involving Rotary Clubs around the world, with the mission to:

Respond to disasters with the supply of humanitarian aid to the affected communities and/or individuals.
Work in partnership on humanitarian projects funded by other organisations including Rotary clubs and Rotary districts.

In contrast to many other disaster-response groups, our aim is also to provide an infrastructure that allows affected communities to regain their normal lives.

If your organisation, club or group are meeting online during the pandemic, we would be very happy speak about Disaster Aid UK & Ireland to a meeting.

Please contact chairman Pam Joyce giving details of the time and date of the meeting.

Contact Pam

View video for the role of DARTS

Deployments

In the event of a deployment, Disaster Aid International will send out fully trained Disaster Aid Response Team volunteers (DARTS) to the affected country in order to:

Conduct an assessment of the disaster and local needs;
Coordinate with relevant governments, aid agencies and the affected communities to ensure that aid is deployed where most effective;
Manage the effective distribution of equipment, tents etc. to the sites of deployment;
Train members of the local community so that they can be involved in the distribution and deployment of the equipment, tents etc.;
Work to ensure that deployments are designed to support longer term sustainability;
Monitor and evaluate our deployments to ensure that both the products we are deploying as well as the means of distribution are relevant, effective and reach out to the most vulnerable.

MORE INFORMATION

How you can help - Donate

We have found that people can be incredibly generous once a disaster has struck. In such cases, we usually create a special fund raising campaign and funds raised by this campaign will be used for the specific disaster concerned. However, a real challenge for all disaster aid organisations, ourselves included, is that we need to be able to raise funds in preparation for future disasters.

This enables us to pre-position the stock of aid products in various parts of the world so we can respond quickly to the very urgent need when disaster next strikes. (donations received now are going to restocking tents and other aid products for future disaster aid work)

How you can help - Presenting

We have a full programme of presentations, demonstrations and exhibitions suitable for Rotary clubs, professional organisations, schools etc. We are very interested in both extending our regional cover and increasing our profile with local and national businesses and also younger people by working with schools, colleges and youth groups.

The more people we have on the ground, the more we can do ! We are therefore interested in hearing from anyone who in is interested in becoming an Ambassador for us. We provide a day of training for new Ambassadors and also an experienced ambassador to co-present during the first one or two events.