I live in Minnesota, which is a long way away from the disaster of Katrina. Even so, the effects of the Gulf Coast tragedy are rippling up here. Folks have relatives in the South. They’re worried about them and want to help. Even though many of us can’t get down there, we still want to help out in what little ways we can.
Weblog writers have been encouraged to write disaster relief posts encouraging anyone to donate. Count me in. If you want to help, go to Truth Laid Bear and sign up as well.
You can donate money at the following websites:
- Red Cross
- Salvation Army
- Catholic Charities USA
- Samaritan’s Purse
- Southern Baptist Relief Center
- Habitat for Humanity
- Feed the Children
- The Humane Society
- Mennonite Disaster Service
- B’nai B’rith International Disaster Relief
- Chabad Lubavitch of Louisiana Hurricane Relief Fund
Groups like Habitat for Humanity will need money and, later on, volunteers. Groups like the Red Cross need money, donations of essentials, and blood. Think about where you can give (giving blood doesn’t cost a penny) and do it. Give until it hurts.
Edited to include these links: **
Nice post. I finally got my things for help posted today. I dread trying fancy stuff like getting a link button in my sidebar! I’m gonna try to trackback yours. We all must help these people or we will have a bigger welfare state than we could ever survive. And that’s just the logistics. Somewhere in our hardened hearts, there is the God-given compassion for such a dreadful plight they are faced with. There’s always that question, “what if it were me?”
Giving for Katrina
This is going to be a concerted effort among webmasters, to get in your faces about helping out! : )
A technical whiz you are ha?
Well good for you for trying this new stuff out.
I did get the trackback. Thanks.
Kudos on your efforts to bring relief to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. There is another way bloggers and other thoughtful people can help:
I have opened forums at http://www.DisasterReliefIdeas.org for the discussion of ideas to aid disaster relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I am not soliciting donations, only ideas. Experts in aspects of disaster relief (housing, healthcare, rebuilding, etc.) are also able to rate these ideas, giving us a means of identifying the most promising ones, which will be shared with disaster relief professionals and persons in authority. Please help our society by contributing your ideas, especially if you are unable to contribute financially to relief efforts.
I have made a customized EMERGENCY type search engine that links only to crisis situation type websites (like relief aide, evacuation planning layouts, crisis management setup and others relating to disasters caused by terrorism, natural disasters, poverty, disease and man-made war), see http://www.CrisisSearch.com … This niche portal was made after the Katrina devastation and hopefully it will assist humanity in/during the next disasterous crisis…
Please add related crisis blogs and websites to the database, already 1,000 websites spidered for meta data (fetched meta tags for description, title and keywords, plus we then grab the text from page and cache it for further searchable data)…
Also a portal as at the bottom of every search page has external links. Also a ‘Suggestion Bot’ that tries to suggest similar terms to use in further queries… Blogs/forums are on the way (being created so people can find more personalized one-on-one advice/help) for people to post missing friends, family, pets or post about volunteering or possible stradegies for Emergency Planning for current crisises or Clean-Up plans for past disasters.
My first ever nonprofit humanitarian project was http://www.SpareSomeChange.com which only covers resources for those living homeless (I had suffered homelessness a few times as a youth). I will try to come up with other helping humanity type portals as I can afford too…