Pakistan Flood Appeal

Aug 23, 2010 03:45 PM

Severe flooding in Pakistan has left over three million people in need of urgent help including one and a half million children. SOS Children has eight Villages in the country and is on the ground, ready to help those who are most vulnerable. With your help we are aiming to provide 100,000 food packages for the people of Pakistan

If you would like to make a donation to SOS Children’s Villages Pakistan, please visit the regular or one-off donation pages. If you can, please consider sponsoring a child in Pakistan or if you are Islamic please read more about zakat giving.

SOS Pakistan Flood Appeal food trucks ready to go SOS Children is ready to provide shelter to unaccompanied children who become lost or orphaned as a result of the ongoing Pakistan flooding disaster.  But now SOS Children is also aiming to provide funds to give 100,000 food packages as well as medicines and tents to the people of Pakistan worst affected by the disaster.

The flooding in Pakistan has created a large humanitarian disaster.  According to the UN, the death toll currently stands at 1,600 people, with 14 million or 8 percent of the population now affected. The UN says the disaster is the largest the country has faced: millions of people have been displaced and there has been mass devastation to crops. It is estimated that half a million tonnes of both wheat and sugar may have been destroyed by the floods.  As Ramadan has started, it is important to source local food for many affected by the flooding.

Mrs Souriya Anwar, President of SOS Children's Villages Pakistan, has said: "Fortunately none of the SOS Pakistan Flood Appeal tentSOS facilities anywhere in the country are affected, nor are they are likely to be in the future, as they are in safe areas. However, as you are aware large areas of the country and millions of people are affected. We have offered to the authorities in all regions that we will take responsibility for any orphaned, abandoned or lost child."

To provide relief for children and their families in affected regions in Pakistan, SOS Children will be working in tandem with the charities Concerned Citizens Society of Pakistan (CCP) and the Fatima Memorial Hospital System.  SOS Children has worked with CCP in the past.

SOS Children is aiming to raise funds to provide 100,000 food packages, each costing about £13, or £1.3 million in total.  Each food package provides food for a family of 6-8 people for 10 days.

We ask for your support in funding these relief efforts for flood-affected families in Pakistan.

If you would like to make a donation, please go to the Donate page, and specify in the ‘special instructions’ box, that you would like your donation to go towards food packages in Pakistan.

SOS Children already has teams on the ground with child-care and trauma expertise, and has been in Pakistan long enough to have had two sets of commemorative stamps issued for us! We have a strong history of providing emergency relief for disaster areas.  In 2005, after the Kashmir earthquake, an Emergency Relief Programme was launched, providing aid to children and families across the affected area.  In the aftermath, the Pakistani Government asked SOS Children to care for unaccompanied children separated from their families by the earthquake.

Photo courtesy of Adrees Latif, Reuters, Alertnet.