Daniella Orihuela-Gruber over at www.allaboutmanga.net had a wonderful idea for helping the victims of the natural disasters in Japan. She set up a group of anime and manga bloggers, and set a goal to donate $1000 to Doctors Without Borders and Shelterbox, and has been busy on twitter promoting the hell out of her initiative.
I’d already donated to Red Cross, but since then I’ve heard that there’s administrative fees taken out of Red Cross donations, which is unfortunate. I really appreciate Daniella’s idea of specific aid that is the most needed right this moment, so I donated to both Doctors Without Borders and Shelterbox, and I’ll be donating again the next time I get paid.
If you can, please help out. It doesn’t have to be much. I’ve only been able to donate $10 to each charity so far. One of my current ideas is to attempt to ebay things I don’t want cluttering up the house anymore and donating whatever I get from that to the people of Japan, who need the money much more than I do right now. If you’re unable to donate, that’s cool too. There are other ways though, such as helping to promote efforts like this one.
For instance, you can create. Tim Maughan posted a techno mix on his blog with the theme of reconstruction in mind, with the hope that people will listen and be inspired to help in any way they are able. Write, create art and music, or just whatever you can think of.
So please, check out the website for Bloggers For Japan, and at the very least, add one of the banners to your site or blog if you have one.