Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.

Contributed by Staff Writer

Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink. -Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The recent floods have taken up1600 lives and displaced over 20 million individuals. The displaced are struggling to find a dry place to sleep, a morsel of food to eat and a sip of clean water to drink. Their number is constantly increasing. One fifth of the country remains under water. There are many who hold aid and relief goods in their inbox but are unable to reach out to the effected due to lack of awareness about devastated areas.

In the midst of this, countless text messages are being sent to PakReport updating and informing them about areas which are still in need of help. On the other hand, Citizens of Pakistan are efficiently providing valuable information and  guiding people through their wiki so that relief can reach out to flood affected areas, in a quick and efficient manner. And Floodrelief is collecting donations to help the needy.

In IT Industry many individuals/companies are contributing in whichever way they can in order to help. Remarkable initiatives have been taken up by pakreport.org. This is a platform where its team is coordinating authentic information on affected areas so that relief can reach them in a timely fashion. The site offers relevant, timely, and up-to-date information about flood effected areas. The site relies on information sent through people in form of text messages through mobile phones.

Pakrelief Team at Pakreport.org has created an innovative way where they monitor and verify every information based text message which they receive. Once verified the information is then mapped onto the Crisis Map. A notification is then sent to the agency working in that particular area so that they can make necessary arrangements for providing aid.

This way many significant lives have been saved. pakreport.org informed CodeWeek about interesting and amazing ways in which they are playing a remarkable role in raising awareness about the flood effected areas. According to the organization, BBC Urdu, Amnesty International, Yahoo News, Christian Science Monitor and the Ministry of Information have been backing them with coverage and endorsements. “We are meeting with arms of the UN and UM Healthcare Trust and Association for the Development of Pakistan, two of the first organizations to work with us”.

“The system relies on the cooperation of agencies and individuals conducting relief work on the ground. The Ministry of Information has been very helpful in educating the heads of state media about the initiative, but we are still at the stage of reaching out to agencies,” says Faisal Chohan, an Islamabad based technology entrepreneur who set up PakReport. “The more people start using this crisis map, the better we’ll be able to avoid unintended duplication of relief work and reach people who haven’t yet been helped.”

Citizens of Pakistan, a non-profit organization, is also playing an important role in his respect. After PakReport we have Shah Sawant from yello.pk working on similar grounds. He has created a wiki at citizensofpakistan.org. Providing an open platform where we can share any information on camps or organizations that are collecting donations. The main plan behind this wiki is to collect authentic information at one place so that relief goods can be safely and effectively handed over in the right hands.  This organization is making extensive efforts in fighting for the rights of all the citizens of Pakistan regardless of their caste, color, creed, gender, language, religion or ethnicity.

Floodrelief.pk an initiative of Naseeb Network is also making its mark when it comes to working for Pakistan’s aid. The Mahvash and Jahangir Siddiqui Foundation, a charitable, non-profit organization, has designed a flood relief program where they will help by providing the disaster stricken with items of basic needs. At present, the MJSF has surveyed selected areas in Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa and has delineated a relief schedule extending up to the 2nd week of August.

They keep updating the status of collected Floodrelief.pk amount. This amount has reached Rs 1,328,000 for flood victims. These were a few examples of agencies who have been working hard in order to shape up the disorganized situation of flood affected areas.

Bundles of aid has reached Pakistan from global community, but still the country needs more support. There are many out there who have been finding ways to help the effected. Many have succeeded; others are on their way towards success. Media is working very enthusiastically towards it and supporting many NGOs, and NGOs on the other hand are being powered by various other organizations and the local public. The local public does not care whether they acquire any personal gain out of it or not.  All that matters at the end of the day is that we stand united and Pakistan moves forward.

The image capture above has been captured by Ammar Shareef. A young photographer from Multan.

With amazing photographic skills Ammar definitely has a bright future in front of him.