Typhoon Haiyan: The ELLE Foundation supports the Cameleon association, its partner in the Philippines since 2010

Immediately after the devastating destruction caused by Typhoon Haiyan, we made contact with our partner in the Philippines, the Cameleon association, for which we fund an education and training support programme for young teenage girls in Iloilo.

The association’s president, Laurence Ligier, whom we welcomed, several months ago for an ELLE Foundation Event, reassured us. There was a great deal of destruction in the town centre, but there were no victims among the children. However, she has not heard from several families or from some of her Filipino employees. She asks our help to deal with emergencies, repair homes, and install temporary shelters for the children and families for whom she is responsible.

When a tragedy of this scale occurs, we would all like to get involved and participate, directly or indirectly, to the best of our ability, in the general effort.
Haiyan, the terrible typhoon that swept across the Philippine archipelago, has left in its wake a disaster equivalent to the 2004 tsunami or the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. According to the UN News Centre, there were over 10,000 deaths in the city of Tacloban alone and the number of people needing to be rescued is estimated at nearly 10 million.

Despite the difficulties of access, emergency workers are on the scene and substantial resources are being deployed to help the survivors. It is crucial in the coming days to deliver food and medicine, facilitate access to safe drinking water and care for the injured.

UN agencies, such as UNICEF, the World Food Program and the Philippine Red Cross, with support from the Federation which is coordinating the whole movement, including the French Red Cross and major NGOs such as Médecins du Monde or Action against Hunger, which have been present for many years now, are still hard at work.

If you would like to participate in this surge of generosity, you can of course send them your donations directly, but you may also choose to support more modest NGOs, whose long-term work in the field we are quite familiar with, such as Enfants d’Asie (Children of Asia).

To send a donation to Cameleon and support the work of Laurence Ligier and her teams, please go to the association’s site at the following address: http://www.cameleon-association.org

It is important to provide ongoing aid and that our support is not merely the result of this great wave of legitimate emotion. Thousands of miles from us, the Filipinos certainly need our help now, but they will also need it for a long time into the future.

Thank you in advance for your solidarity.

Karine Guldemann
Executive Officer