Tzu Chi Provides Relief Aid to Over 9,000
Hurricane Victims
The Taiwan Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation
continued to provide emergency relief assistance to evacuees
of Hurricane Katrina, and as of Sept. 11, Tzu Chi has given
US$701,200 to 3,838 households, benefiting 9,183 hurricane
victims.
Tzu Chi began handing out shopping cards
or checks to the evacuees on Sept. 4. All evacuees can get
the emergency aid from Tzu Chi when they check out of the
temporary evacuation centers. In general, each household is
given US$200.
The evacuees who have received Tzu Chi
relief assistance included 2,078 households in Beaumont, 213
households at Overseas Chinese Educational and Cultural Center
in Houston, 209 households at George Brown Convention Center,
76 households at Astrodome, 1,151 households at Dallas Convention
Center, 100 households in Kansas, six in New York City, two
in New York State, and one in northern California.
Tzu Chi has committed US$4 million for
emergency relief efforts. Tzu Chi members across the world
have responded the call of Dharma Master Cheng Yen, founder
of Tzu Chi, to raise funds to support on-going and subsequent
relief plans.
The 68-year-old nun urges everyone to "treat
everyone in the world as our family and embrace their suffering
as our own."
Tzu Chi members in the following 24 countries
have organized activities to appeal for donations: the United
States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Dutch Maarten,
Paraguay, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Malaysia,
Indonesia, Brunei, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Thailand, Jordan,
mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, France, Austria, England,
South Africa, and Taiwan.
Tzu Chi USA has set up a relief coordination
center in Houston. Hundreds of volunteers have been mobilized
to care for the evacuees in many cities of the United States.
Some Tzu Chi members from Canada and Taiwan have also arrived
in Houston to help with the relief efforts.
As over 200 evacuees are staying at Veterans
Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, a Tzu Chi volunteer flew to
that city from Houston on Sept. 11 to arrange the distribution
of emergency relief checks to the evacuees.
A mobile dental vehicle, equipped with
two dental stations and owned by the Los Angeles-based Buddhist
Tzu Chi Free Clinic, is now stationed in Beaumont, Texas,
to provide free dental treatment for the evacuees. Besides
the dentists from the Tzu Chi International Medical Association,
a local American dentist volunteered to join Tzu Chi in treating
the patients.
Tzu Chi will also distribute medical kits
to the evacuees. Over 10,000 kits have been transported by
Taiwan's China Airlines to the United States from Taipei free
of charge. Once the kits are readied, they will be given to
the evacuees who need them.
Tzu Chi is a humanitarian organization
that is known for its commitment to assist disaster victims
from the beginning to the last. For instance, it is still
engaged in building six schools in Bam, Iran, felled by the
Dec. 26, 2003 earthquake, and building thousands of houses
for survivors of the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunamis in Sri Lanka and
Indonesia.
The CEO of Tzu Chi USA, Austin Tsao, expressed
Tzu Chi's intention of giving mid-term and long-term aid to
affected New Orleans residents when he talked with the governor
of Louisiana at the Astrodome on Sept. 11.
