Slovak aid to Southeast Asia

The sound of waves on the beach evokes in many of us fond memories of our last summer holidays. But we hardly need reminding of the potential destructive power of the oceans. Even in landlocked Slovakia, December 26 and the Tsunami catastrophe in Southeast Asia brought this message home. Many Slovak tourists were present when the wave struck, but luckily none of them were hurt.

Immediately after the wave struck, non-governmental organisations started fundraising and sending humanitarian aid and workers. For the foundation People in Need, Katarina Macejakova, a humanitarian aid worker, was sent to Sri Lanka two weeks after the tragedy and has just come back home. One of the projects she launched there was building houses and the other ...

"We are making new boats for small fishermen communities. These are the small traditional sea boats. And later we would like to distribute nets for fishermen."

Following the catastrophic storm that has swept away a part of the Tatra national park just a month before the tsunami wave struck, Slovaks were at first reluctant to give away their money to charities giving humanitarian aid. In the end however they did help.

The biggest source of donations was through a system of sending donations via mobile phone messages, the first time this method was tried in Slovakia. I went out to the streets of Bratislava to ask people whether they used this opportunity and sent text message - or SMS - donations.

"I sent a couple, two or three and I just hope that it goes to the right people."

"I do not trust these organizations that try to gather so much money. Nobody knows where the money goes to."

"Actually I sent some money, 50 crowns to one foundation, but I don't trust the way of sending help through SMS, because anyone can use it for themselves, like the hackers."

"Collections are useful."

In total they donated 16 million Slovak crowns to the People in Need SOS account, which is about 400 thousand Euros. Katarina Macejakova considers this a big step forward.

"In history of providing humanitarian help from the Slovak side this was the biggest collection in history. Slovakia doesn't have an experience in providing humanitarian help. There has never been any philanthropic thinking before, a kind of public responsibility. It has never been built up here. I hope this was some step forward in providing humanitarian help from Slovakia."

Certainly financial donations are much needed. As Katarina says, at the level of intergovernmental help, insufficient financial resources were raised. However, this is not the case for public donations to charities.

"They have received too many resources, so there is a lot of money available right now. Sometimes it is very difficult to find out how to use the money properly."

But can that be bad to have too much money?

"I hope that if there will be enough of coordination there is a chance the money will be used properly. There is a need for it. All these countries are very poor and they need these financial resources."

An experienced humanitarian aid worker like Katarina, is very familiar with the situation. She's been doing this work for more than a year now.

"Sri Lanka was just a surprise for me, because I came back home only for a vacation. And when this happened I was in Slovakia and so they just sent me there, they relocated me for a while and in two days I am going back to Afghanistan."

What's the life of a humanitarian aid worker like?

"It's hard. You don't have any personal life so it is very difficult. But it's mostly rewarding if you see the results and if people are grateful. If you see that you have been working here for a couple of months, it was so hard but in the end you have these 100 women in Afghanistan who can read and write and they were totally illiterate at the beginning, this is a reward for me."

The initial distrust of Slovaks towards non-governmental humanitarian work has been broken by SE Asia collection. Perhaps there is some truth in the saying that every cloud has a silver lining. And it may just be that through this Slovaks have learned that we are a part of a bigger picture, in which everyone might need help one day.