Six months after the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami that devastated South Asia, reconstruction work and other assistance and support from the international trade union community is well under way. With contributions from AFT members, affiliates and others to its tsunami disaster relief fund, the AFT has sent $100,000 to Education International (EI) for relief efforts, and additional contributions of $40,000 each are being sent to Public Services International (PSI) and the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center.

Educational International, a federation of more than 345 organizations representing teachers and education personnel around the world, is focusing its efforts on Sri Lanka and the Aceh province of Indonesia, the two regions hit hardest by the tsunami. While there is still much to be done, EI reports, the reconstruction process of school buildings has begun. In addition, EI has been working with teacher unions in both countries to offer training in trauma counseling. EI is also assisting in teacher training and recruitment programs to help build the region's shattered teaching work force; in the Aceh province alone, where 765 schools were destroyed, about 2,000 of the 55,000 teachers are dead or missing and thousands more lost their homes and loved ones. Throughout the region, EI has also provided individual contributions to affected union members and their families, as well as children orphaned in the disaster.

Public Services International, the global federation of public employee unions, has also provided emergency relief and long-term assistance, working with such unions as the electric power company workers' union in Indonesia and the nurses' union in Sri Lanka, as well as public sector unions in Thailand and India. Both PSI and EI are participating in the Global Unions Tsunami Solidarity (GUTS) project in cooperation with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the Global Union Federations (GUF) to coordinate relief efforts and funding.

The AFL-CIO Solidarity Center also has provided support and funds to scores of unions in the region for specific projects in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. These range from the funding of relief and rehabilitation experts in the field to continuing and expanding free health clinics.

For more information on tsunami relief efforts, go to EI's Web site at: http://www.ei-ie.org/tsunami, PSI's Web site at http://www.world-psi.org/tsunami or the Solidarity Center's Asia Web site at http://www.solidaritycenter.org/where_we_work/asia/.

June 20, 2005