Hands On Disaster Response is now All Hands Volunteers

After 4 weeks in China, we are simultaneously:
1. Strengthening our relationship with our targeted project sites
2. Working towards securing permission to launch

The centralized bureaucracy and lack of a Chinese precedent for organizing NGOs, especially in a disaster context, adds to the challenge of this assessment.

Along with making connections with Chinese NGOs, we’ve also branched out our site assessments. John made the 10 hour trip to Bazhong, a cluster of rural villages built with mud brick construction on the very edge of Sichuan province. We’ve also followed reports on the situation in Gansu province from iboughtashelter.com, where they are now on the ground.

Operations director Marc Young will join me in Beijing this week for a round of higher level meetings, while John continues to pursue our connections in Chengdu. We’re planning a two-week push to try to move forward in both of our goals; thanks to our patient volunteers and supporters for your continued enthusiasm!

Tags: All Hands -switch

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at 10:33 pm and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.