Here is my report on my experience:

  

Three days after the earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir on 8 October 2005, the International Foundation sent 10 tonnes of food aid.

I went to Islamabad airport to collect it. Through our local network, after gathering together three lorries to transport the produce, and with one volunteer from a local NGO, we travelled along the mountainous roads of Northern Pakistan , which had just been reopened. Towards midnight, we reached the heart of the disaster zone.

In Balakot, the town worst hit by the earthquake, an NGO unit was waiting for us. We unloaded the supplies and I was able to talk a little with some of the survivors.

The next morning, the food was distributed in the surrounding villages.

 

Although difficult and traumatic, this experience will remain one of the most memorable of my trip to Asia. The wave of solidarity among the Pakistani people following this disaster was immense.

The volunteers in Balakot were quick to use me to boost morale, asking me to visit centres receiving emergency aid and units sorting medical supplies. The volunteers, who had not slept for three days, felt spurred on by the visit of a foreigner, realising that solidarity did not end at their country's borders, but had become international.

 

The foundation's aid did not stop there; a mobile medicine unit has been financed through the Friendship NGO and is still in operation. A refurbished coach with a team of medical professionals goes around villages in the earthquake zone to provide healthcare to local communities.

 

Bangladesh:

 

Frequent flooding in Bangladesh leads to utter destitution for millions of Bangladeshi. Carrefour's International Foundation finances emergency aid, as it did in 2004 when the Friendship NGO provided support for thousands of families in the north of the country. Back then I helped distribute the food aid that had been arranged in this extremely isolated region. Friendship is one of the few organisations to operate there. We went in by hydroplane and started distributing food to people living on scattered patches of sand, cut off from the world, in the middle of the Ganges Delta and in Brahmaputra.

Again, after the provision of emergency aid, the foundation funded a development project rebuilding homes.

The capital, Dhaka, was also affected and with another NGO we were able to organise food handouts for stricken communities.