Bay Area mobilizes quake relief efforts
Anastasia Ustinova, Chronicle Staff Writer
(05-13) 20:42 PDT -- Since Monday, the phone has not stopped ringing at the San Jose residence of Charles Mu, the president of the Northern Californian Sichuan Folks Association. Friends, colleagues and members all wanted to know how to help victims of the earthquake that struck China's Sichuan province.
"When there is a happy thing, people come together, and when there is a sad thing, people come together," said Mu, whose group represents about 300 Chinese Americans from Sichuan.
With the news about the devastating earthquake spreading quickly through e-mails, text messages and blogs, dozens of Bay Area Chinese American organizations are mobilizing their fundraising efforts to help the victims of the disaster.
While the telephone lines in Sichuan were down most of Monday, George Zou watched the aftermath of the earthquake broadcast on YouTube and saw pictures that his friends took with their cell phones. Luckily, his parents, brothers and cousins, who live about 150 miles outside the provincial capital, Chengdu, were not affected.
"The earthquake awareness there is nonexistent," said Zou, one of the 150 members of the Silicon Valley Sichuan University Alumni Association. "Chengdu has not been affected by an earthquake of such magnitude in years."
Scrambling to come up with a quick relief plan, the alumni association and other Chinese American groups are holding emergency meetings throughout the Bay Area.
"Within 24 hours, we mobilized all the organizations we know, and we all said, 'Let's join our efforts,' " said Albert Chang, co-chair of the Pan-Chinese American Alliance, which represents 55 business and family groups in the Bay Area. "Now we are trying to set up a bank account where people can send checks."
Chang said the alliance is planning a kung-fu competition fundraiser May 24 at the Santa Clara Convention Center and a concert featuring Chinese singers later in the month.
Volunteers with the Shin Shin Educational Foundation, based in Cupertino, have spent more than a decade rebuilding 26 elementary schools in Sichuan, and lost all the communication with them after Monday's earthquake, said member Betty Lee Young. Named after the Chinese motto, "group effort will bring prosperity," the foundation has already allocated $10,000 from its emergency fund to send to the schools.
"Those buildings were very dangerous and old - if it rained, the kids could not go to school - and we helped to rebuild them," Lee Young said. "We would like to know what the situation is with the schools, but the Chinese government is not giving us any information."
On Tuesday, the local Chinese-language newspapers extensively covered the aftermath of the earthquake and the fundraising efforts of the Chinese community, said Edward Liu, a local immigration lawyer and community activist.
"Blogosphere is also full of news not just from inside China, but all throughout the ethnic Chinese overseas diaspora scattered in over 135 countries, with at least 40 million overseas Chinese," Liu wrote in an e-mail. "And China's authorities have been amazingly open in allowing press access."
Sing Tao News ran a 10-page story Tuesday on the Sichuan earthquake and the local relief campaign, and kicked off a fundraiser in its affiliated offices in New York, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Toronto, London and Sydney. The newspaper organized similar campaigns after Hurricane Katrina and the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Whenever there is a major disaster, we do the fundraising very quickly," said editor in chief Joseph Leung. "(Our readers) are used to that, and yesterday we started getting phone calls from people asking how they can to donate."
According to a statement by the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, a disaster relief headquarters has been set up in China to coordinate rescue work, medical care, security and information.
Tuesday, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom called for donations to support the earthquake relief efforts and said he is planning to send members of his staff to China to assess the emergency response.
Newsom said he will collaborate with the Chinese government "so that San Francisco can do its part to assist those in need and learn from our Chinese counterparts in disaster response."
How to help
Organizations you can contact to make donations to help the earthquake victims:
Northern Californian Sichuan Folks Association: (408) 238-3614;
www.sichuanfolks.org
Sing Tao News: 625 Kearny St., San Francisco, 94108; (415) 989-7111
Shin Shin Educational Foundation:
www.shinshinfoundation.org
Red Cross:
www.redcross.org
MercyCorps:
www.mercycorps.org
CARE:
www.care.org
Save the Children:
www.savethechildren.org
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