Support our WorldFish Myanmar colleagues

This is a fundraising campaign organized by WorldFish to support our team members in the Mandalay area in Myanmar who have lost their homes in the March 28 earthquake. Funds raised as part of this campaign will be distributed evenly amongst the five staff members in the impacted area.

The recent earthquake has left some of our WorldFish colleagues in Myanmar without safe homes to return to. Streets are damaged, partially collapsed buildings are a hazard and neighbourhoods are in disarray. Food prices have gone up rapidly in the area due to the situation. Before this natural disaster, the USAID funding cuts had already impacted our team in Myanmar.

Five staff and their families in Mandalay and Naypyitaw plus the surrounding areas are having to sleep in the street due to the continuing daily aftershocks – 281 at between 1 to 5 magnitude in the last week.

We are creating an emergency donations fund to help our Myanmar colleagues in Mandalay through this crisis. The donations raised from colleagues will be split evenly between the five staff in the impacted area in Mandalay. While there have been no deaths or injuries among our WorldFish staff they have all suffered material damage and loss of property. In addition, every one of them has lost a friend or someone close to them among the thousands of people killed.

No donation amount is too small—what matters is showing our friends they are not alone. We aim to gather and send the funds by April 10 as the Buddhist new year and bank closures will be from April 12 for a week. Funds will be transferred to Michael Akester (Regional Director, Southeast Asia & the Pacific) who will distribute this evenly to the affected colleagues.