Tsunami relief

People around the world are inventing ways to help the millions of people devastated by the Dec. 26 tsunami in southern Asia. More than $3 billion has been pledged so far.

Locally, a Cape Girardeau restaurant owner originally from Thailand is donating half the proceeds from last Thursday's dinner business. Students at Cape Girardeau elementary schools are raising money for the tsunami survivors while studying the character trait "compassion." An SBC sales rep is gathering donations at work to send to the American Red Cross. And so many other local efforts are raising even more dollars for tsunami victims.

The Red Cross is one of the primary conduits for money to help the survivors. United Way International has created the South Asia Response Fund, which is intended to provide long-term support.

Near Seattle, children put up a hot chocolate stand to make money for donations. In North Carolina, prison inmates are helping refurbish donated broken bicycles that will be shipped to Indonesia.

Corporations are pitching in as well. Procter & Gamble is donating $1.5 million in drinking water. The Cape Girardeau County plant is participating in a program in which P&G matches 50 percent of its employees' donations.

Our pledges are generous, but it is much more important that we follow through. A year ago, countries pledged $1 billion to help earthquake victims in Iran, but the country has received only $17.5 million in aid so far. Many of the earthquake victims in Iran are still living in tents.

Already the tsunami is moving off the front pages of our newspapers and to later slots in newscasts. Our attention span is short.

But relief officials say as many as 5 million people in south Asia lack the essentials to survive. They have a long way to go before their lives even begin to approach a state of normality. They can't be forgotten.