Friday

Dear Friends,

Some of you may know that in 1996, a major earthquake happened in Lijiang, Yunnan Province which led to the discovery to Lijiang, a beauty mountainous County with unique minority culture to gain the status of “World Culture Heritage” . Yunnan Amity Office got actively involved in the earthquake relief. Our team brought in supplies to the epicenter at the first emergent time, even before the military troops set their foot in. After that, Amity Project Office in Yunnan has worked

in 3 earthquakes in Zhaotong, 1 earthquake in Yao’an and has accumulated very rich experience through hands on service in the earthquake inflicted areas.

Tomorrow morning, Mr. Ye Xiaoxiang, Director of Amity Project Office in Yunnan, and Mr. Ye Chunbo, staff associate will drive for 14 hours from Kunming to Chengdu and join the Amity staff there. By that time, the number of Amity staff/volunteers on the ground will amount to 16.

We hope that with stronger team, we’ll be able to do more for the fellow people in Sichuan.

She Hongyu

From today on, I shall give everyone an update every few days since the most of the ground work now primarily focuses on visiting village to village, finding out real needs by doing need-based-assessment, choosing the most appropriate villages for the post-disaster work, exploring possibilities of starting orphan fostering and rehabilitation work at the earliest time possible. I will not bore you with repeated stories, but will present to you some highlights of our work from time to time.

On the morning of May 23, a “Social worker” team consisting of 6 professors from Nanjing University, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing Population Administration University and 2 staff from Amity set off to Chengdu. The two Amity staff are:

Ms. Tang Chuanfang, Publicity and Resource Development Division, who took up Social Work in University and worked at the Psychological Crisis Intervention Centre in Nanjing before joining Amity;

Mr. Xu Qingke, Master degree holder of Geography, graduated from Nanjing University, an expert of environmental protection”, referred as the expert on environmental protection at Amity.

The team, assessed as the first Social Worker group in Jiangsu Province and the 2^nd in the whole of China left Amity in the morning after 3 day preparation. Prior to their departure, Ms. Karen Gabe, psychologist from the U.S. and also served as a former Amity teacher was invited to give a seminar.

It is reported that there are millions of people who survived the earthquake and have been relocated. Having survived the quake, terror, worry, grief and the fear of safety have surrounded the victims. Amity realizes that the most effective and efficient way to give intervention would be the group working approach. Our volunteers would work in pairs as facilitators for a group of 6-8 people following the “Critical Incident Stress Debriefing-Sanford Model”. On basis of the group work, cases need more attentions will be picked out for special 1 to 1 counseling.

As time was so limited before the team departed, staff at Amity worked in the wee hours to get ready for the departure. Purchasing quilts, tents, water, medicine, getting vaccination etc. all had to be done within very limited time. At the airport, we were very fortunate to have the support from the airport to check in all the luggage through special channel as the first priority luggage.

At the moment, we are not able to connect with our front line staff who have arrived in Mianzhu Stadium, our target working site where over 6000 people shelters. I talked to them after half an hour before they entered into Mianzhu. However, mobile phones are disconnected now and we hope they will send information back from now and then.