Date: January 20, 2005 | Contact: Paul Turner | Phone: (+1) 301 987-5883

Reporting from Colombo, Sri Lanka

I arrived in Colombo on Thursday, after an exhaustive plane trip and many days frantically trying to tie up loose ends in Washington DC. It is a big sacrifice for me and my family, but I feel impelled to oversee the relief efforts in Sri Lanka and to make certain that your kind donations are properly utilized.

Mr. Mahakarta Das (left), the director of Hare Krishna Food for Life in Sri Lanka, greeted me at the airport and immediately took me to observe the orphanage that his wife, Nandarani (right) manages.

The children looked very happy and healthy, with beaming smiles as they crowded around the door to greet me. Mahakarta showed me the new construction taking place which will provide more facility to the 80 children presently residing at the orphanage and the many more that will come in the near future.

Caring for the Children of the Tsunami

Immediately after the disaster occurred in Sri Lanka, our local Food for Life representative, Mr. Mahakarta Das, started distributing hot meals to the victims. But since he was already being overwhelmed with an increase in needy children to his orphanage, he requested Food for Life Global in Washington D.C. to coordinate the distribution of food in the affected areas.

Food for Life Global flew its Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mr. I. Swami ("Maharaja"), from South Africa to assess the situation and set up an infrastructure for the expansion program. It was at this time that we began requesting volunteers to help us. We received well over
400 volunteer applications. It was truly overwhelming for us to see the outpouring of sentiment and absolute selflessness of you all. I cannot imagine how many volunteer requests larger organizations like the Red Cross must have received!

Upon arriving in Colombo, our representatives immediately got in touch with the Sri Lankan president's secretary, who was coordinating relief work around the country. He suggested that Food for Life could distribute food in the district of Matar in the south. The Matar district was one of the most severely affected by the Tsunami wave. Maharaja tells me that his heart broke as he drove south along the coast and saw first hand the terrible destruction of the Tsunami. "Entire villages had been wiped out," he explained. Apparently, there was only rubble for hundreds of kilometers. "I had never witnessed anything like it in my life. I was visibly shaken," he said.

On January 14, our Emergency Relief team reached Matar and met with a Major General in one of the many army camps. After showing us around several refugee camps he requested that we cook each day for the 10,000 people living there. Maharaja noticed immediately, however, that the refugees were eating quite well. Further inquiry revealed that the government was giving them food to cook for themselves. When he asked the Major General about this he said it was true, but nevertheless he wanted our team to cook for the refugees, using our own rice and beans!

We came to the conclusion that there was no need to expand our food relief projects to the extent we previously planned. It would best to focus on pockets of under served areas in the North and East since most people on the Island, especially in the South, are getting ample supplies of food and water from the government.

It had taken Maharaja 7 days to fully understand this and he immediately contacted our headquarters in Washington DC and told us not to send too many volunteers for relief work.

This then put us in a very tricky situation. Food for Life Global had already informed 30 volunteers to come to Sri Lanka to help us in our food relief expansion program, and many of them had already purchased tickets. On top of this, we had collected many thousands of dollars specifically to help expand our food relief projects in Sri Lanka. Well, despite the awkward situation, we believe we have a very good solution.

The majority of the money we collected for the Tsunami relief could be used for another type of relief work that is, in fact, desperately needed in Sri Lanka: taking care of newly orphaned children of the Tsunami, and counseling parents who lost their children. No amount of money could ever solve the loss of a child or parent, but Food for Life, through its cooperation with the Bhaktivedanta Orphanage in Colombo, Sri Lanka, is willing to do whatever it can to alleviate the pain even a little.

The ISKCON temple has been running this successful and well organized orphanage for many years. The 80+ children who reside there are getting a healthy education and the loving affection of the staff. Mr. Mahakarta Das is presently making plans to expand the orphanage to accommodate the huge increase in orphans in Sri Lanka. Food for Life is therefore planning to finance the expansion of this orphanage.

As more information comes to light and we have a clear idea of how Food for Life plans to assist the orphans of Sri Lanka, I will inform you.

In the North, South and East, Food for Life was there

A FFL team from Switzerland have set up camp in Point Pedro on the farthest Northern tip of Sri Lanka and are currently serving thousands of cooked meals. Our project in the South which has been serving up to 5000 meals daily will be winding down soon and two new teams will work for at least one more month in the Eastern towns of Batticaloa and Ampara, although the urgency in both areas has diminished somewhat. A full report of all these projects will appear in our next newsletter. (Picture: Batticaloa)

FFL Honesty

We received a nice compliment from one of our FFL volunteers planning to join us in Sri Lanka, I just wanted to thank you for your honesty about the whole situation. As I learned more about Food for Life and more about what the organization was doing in Sri Lanka, I became more and more impressed and won't hesitate to advise friends to support Food for Life in the future."

FFL Global Web Site Draws Attention

One very positive result of Food for Life Global's participation in the Tsunami Relief efforts, has been the marked increase in visitors to our web site. Many people, including many vegetarians, had never heard of Food for Life before. "To know that there is such an organization that is consistent in its compassion to humans and animals, is just wonderful!" said one lady. Many other people echoed the same sentiment. It was very heartwarming to know that there are so many friends of Food for Life.

During the first 10 days after the Tsunami, Food for Life Global received over 2500 emails and our our phone kept ringing at all hours of the night. It got to the point where I had to turn the ringer off so that I could get some sleep. I asked people how they heard about Food for Life and everyone told me they found Food for Life through a search on Google. This fascinated me to think that a small grass roots NGO like Food for Life, with a very limited PR budget, could be ranked so high in Google that indexes over 8 billion web pages. I decided to try it myself. To my surprise, searching with the string, "Tsunami Food Relief," resulted in Food for Life Global being ranked as the 4th and 5th link, above USAID and Catholic Relief Services! Even more astonishing is the same search on Yahoo results in Food for Life Global being ranked 2nd and 3rd!!!

My conclusion was that our sudden thrust into the "Google and Yahoo Spotlight" had to be the result of the vegetarian and vegan communities actively promoting www.ffl.org through their newsletters, banners, web sites and word of mouth. Many of you receive this newsletter and we just want to let you know how much we appreciate your support. Thank you.

Volunteers

Food for Life Global received well over 400 applications from people all across the US and abroad, including doctors, nurses, attorneys, pilots, boat captains, fire fighters, soldiers, business owners, engineers, housewives and students. All of them expressed a very sincere desire to assist Food for Life in its relief projects. Unfortunately, our limited funds and infrastructure would not permit us engaging all of you in volunteer work at this time. But you can be sure that we will keep you informed of future volunteer opportunities as they arise.

Donations

Donations continue to come in to the FFL Global office and through the web site. To date, over $50,000 USD was raised from online donations alone. Many ISKCON temples, businesses, social organizations, and individuals also came forward and gave generously. To all of you, we offer our deepest gratitude.

Hungarian Government

The Hungarian government granted Food for Life Sri Lanka the equivalent of 20,000 USD to support relief efforts in Sri Lanka. The Food for Life projects in Hungary have an excellent reputation and so the Hungarian government gladly offered this small grant knowing fully that the money would be very efficiently utilized.

Film Crew

A television film crew from Hungary will be flying in soon to record our projects on the East Coast. More on this in our next newsletter.

How to Contact Food for Life Global in Sri Lanka

The Food for Life base camp is situated at:
ISKCON
188, New Chetty Street,
Colombo 13
Sri Lanka

email: iskcon@slt.lk
Office phone: +94 11 2433325
fax:+94 11 2471099
Paul Turner Cell: 94 77 302 0495

We ask that all volunteers inform Food for Life Global of their intentions before coming, as there may not be any volunteer opportunities available.

Volunteering Offshore

Food for Life is encouraging people to give their time in their local area to help raise awareness of FFL's activities and thus raise much needed money. The relief efforts we are undertaking will continue for at least one year -- and that means money is crucial. Many students have emailed to ask if they can organize a fundraising drive at their campus. The answer is a resounding "Yes." Please help in whatever way you can, whether it is selling t-shirts, approaching your local businesses, or writing an article. We just ask that you keep Food for Life Global informed of all your activities.

Poster - Please Distribute

Please print and post this new poster around your city. You can also print this flyer and place it in vegetarian restaurants or hand them out at your church or shopping center.

For the webmasters among you, we humbly ask that you place one of these banners on your web site with a link to our home page (www.ffl.org).

Donations by Check

Send to:
Food for Life Global
PO Box 59037 
Potomac, MD 20859, USA 

All donations are tax deductible.

Our "Money Back" Guarantee

All the donations Food for Life Global receives for the Tsunami Relief effort will be wired in bulk to our FFL teams in Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. Our FFL teams then guarantee that 100% of these monies will be spent exclusively on relief services.

Where You Can Donate

JustGive and Network for Good, both of which are prominently displaying Food for Life on their hunger relief pages and of course at the FFL web site using PayPal. (Note: PayPal does extract a very small percentage of the donated money for transaction fees. Typically $3 for a $100 donation).

Thank you for your friendship.

On behalf of all the Food for Life volunteers, we hope this meets you all the in the best of health and happiness.

The Food for Life Global Friends Newsletter is distributed to more than 20,000 vegans and vegetarians worldwide.

Paul Rodney Turner
(Priyavrata das)

Food for Life Global
PO Box 59037 
Potomac, MD 20859, USA 
phone: (571) 277-2329
www.ffl.org