Time: 9pm
Next Friday the 15th October Bandon Film Society in association with Partnership for Change a not for profit climate change initiative will be screening the acclaimed 1931 film Dracula in St Peters Church Bandon with the renowned composer Dr Eric Sweeney to raise funds for flood and humanitarian relief in Pakistan. All proceeds from the event are being donated to the Karachi Relief Trust.
According to the UN the number of people suffering in Pakistan is double the combined total of the 2004 Indian ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The total number affected by the recent floods is 20 million.
Two years ago I met Ayesha Siddiqi, a young Pakistan graduate at a climate change conference. Little did I know that within two years both our countries would be hit by natural disasters as a result of extreme weather events. Our towns and cities have largely been rebuilt, nobody perished in the floods, we have survived one catastrophe to witness another economic crisis. But this pails into insignificance to what the people of Pakistan are currently experiencing. The earthquake that hit northern Pakistan in 2005 killed 85,000 people, made more than 3million homeless with more than 1000 hospitals destroyed. Now less than five years later they are suffering the worst humanitarian crisis to befall a nation in modern times. The floods devastated the already flimsy public health system destroying hundreds of clinics and inundated an area more than twice the size of Ireland, crippling Pakistan’s agriculture and its economy.
Ayesha is currently working with Karachi Relief, a Pakistan Disaster Management Voluntary Organization (www.karachirelief.org) supported by civic minded volunteers. She contacted me recently appealing for help. They have set up camps in some of the worst affected areas and are providing food sanitation, shelter, medical supplies and clean drinking water. The organisation is entirely run and managed by unpaid professionals like Ayesha, volunteering their time and resources in an attempt to make a difference.
