Los Angeles Agency Launches Global Food Drive For Pakistan Flood Victims
Shine Humanity a Los Angeles based Relief Agency launches a Global Food Drive for Pakistan Flood Victims. The food products will be delivered in 18" x 18" boxes and will include drinking water, milk powder, rice, high energy biscuits, and dry fruit. The agency's goal is to deliver 500,000 meals over a period of 4 weeks.
- (1888PressRelease) September 03, 2010 - Irvine, California. Southern California based Shine Humanity today has launched an international effort to pack and deliver family care packages to victims of the Pakistan flood crisis, with multiple locations in Los Angeles now accepting donations of dried food items and hygiene products. Some 20 million people have been displaced in what is being called the "worst devastation ever," and swathes of agricultural land remain underwater. Livelihoods have been wiped out in this primarily agricultural economy and food stocks have been made inconsumable by the flood waters.
"We could not save the 1,600 lives lost in the initial flooding, but we can save the 20 million people at risk now facing hunger and starvation. Food and clean drinking water is of the highest priority," says Laila Karamally, social worker and CEO of the agency. Shine Humanity has previously deployed after 9/11, the South Asia Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, and the Haiti Earthquake. The agency focuses primarily on medical and logistical support services, as well as distribution of humanitarian relief supplies.
"The goal is to pack and ship half a million meals over then next four weeks. We want local communities to get involved, working hands on, putting these family care packages together, in an effort to show the father who tied his baby to a tree so that someone may rescue him that the world is watching and that we care," Karamally added.
Items included in the 18" by 18" boxes will include drinking water, milk powder, rice, high energy biscuits, and dry fruit. Once these boxes have been assembled by volunteers across the country, Shine Humanity hopes to work with national carriers to get the shipments to Chicago and New York. Pakistan International Airlines will take over from there and transport the supplies to a Pakistan port of call, from where the Pakistan Army has guaranteed distribution to flood affected areas within a 36 hour period. "We are launching this effort in California, but hope that as the word spreads, cities and communities across the world will get on-board," Karamally added.
Aid has been a trickle since the floods first struck Pakistan at the beginning of August, and with flood waters still rising, desperation on the ground is mounting. According to the international aid group Oxfam, pledges and donations for the Jan. 12 disaster in Haiti were ten-fold as compared to Pakistan's on-going flood crisis, although the number of people impacted in the aftermath was less than one-sixth of the current numbers for Pakistan. Both the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies as well as the UN have joined in the global appeal, with Red Cross representative Alex Wynter has said "this is a totally exceptional flood" and he has never seen anything of this scale.
For more information on the flood food drive, and a list of drop off locations in your area, please visit www.shinehumanity.org or call Laila Karamally at 714-261-1044.
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