[An-lang] FW: Relief for Aceh through linguists

[Malcolm Ross]

Dear fellow linguists and friends,

As you know, the Indian Ocean region has been hit by a natural disaster
of
horrific proportions.  The worst hit area was the province of Aceh in
northern
Sumatra, where nearly 100,000 perished and many more have been left
homeless.
We, a group of friends of Indonesia and Indonesian aid specialists, have
organized an informal relief effort to help alleviate the survivors'
suffering.  The reason we have decided to act is that government
agencies and
large aid organizations have been focusing on refugee centers, while
most of
the victims have sought refuge with relatives, and are therefore not
reached by
normal channels.

A member of our group, Azwar Hasan, has just returned from Aceh to
Jakarta,
bringing stories of horror but also of hope.  Azwar, a community aid
specialist
and a native of Aceh, has set up a distribution network of trusted
volunteers
in areas affected by the disaster.  Based on his and other Indonesian
friends’
advice, we are sending a small team of community workers to Medan, the
largest
city in Sumatra, which has not been affected by the disaster despite its
proximity to Aceh.  The team will purchase emergency supplies there, and
proceed to Aceh in guarded convoys.  This will ensure that the supplies
safely
reach the people who need them most.

If you would like to make a contribution, you may send it by PayPal to
our US
contact person, Dr. Lera Boroditsky (Stanford University), at the
following
email address:

lera at psych.stanford.edu

(For those of you unfamiliar with PayPal, it is a means of sending money
internationally to anybody with an email account.  PayPal is accessible
on the
web at www.paypal.com.)

If you would like to contribute by ordinary bank transfer, please make
it to
our Indonesia contact person, Dr. Uri Tadmor (Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology and Atma Jaya University):

BCA (Bank Central Asia)
Plaza Sentral Branch
Jl. Jendral Sudirman Kav. 47
Jakarta 12930, Indonesia
Account number: 4411163631
Account swift code: CENAIDJA
Account name: Uri Tadmor

Finally, a special note to participants in the upcoming international
conferences in West Sumatra (ALT VI  in Padang, ISMIL 9 in Maninjau).
The
areas where the conferences will be held have not been affected by the
disaster, and we fully intend to hold the conferences as planned.  This
will
show our support to the people of Sumatra in their time of need, and
will also
give a small yet meaningful boost to the island’s economy.

Updates on our relief efforts will appear periodically on the ALT and
ISMIL
websites.

Uri Tadmor and David Gil


_______________________________________________
An-lang mailing list
An-lang at anu.edu.au
http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/an-lang