Marking the first anniversary of the devastating tsunami in South East Asia, the Red Cross Society of China has annouced that its tsunami fundraising campaign has made a record.

|TOP|In a Beijing press conference on Monday, the Red Cross said it had collected a total of 427 million yuan (approximately £28 million) in donations for tsunami relief.

Wang Xiaohua, communications director of the Red Cross, added that it had set a society record over the past year for money raised for a foreign cause, according to the Japan-based Kyodo news.

Compared with the donation of US$100 million to victims of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the southeastern United States in August, and US$150 million to victims of the Oct. 8 South Asia earthquake, the total amount of donations for tsunami from Red Cross China is exceptional.

"(Due to) experience coping with natural disasters which frequently affect the country, people from wealthy corporations down to the poorest farmer overwhelmed the Chinese Red Cross's telephone donation lines," a statement said.

|AD|168 million yuan of the total amount raised has been used for the tsunami victim nations, mainly Indonesia, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand, the Red Cross's vice director Jiang Yiman was reported by Kyodo news as saying.

Jiang pledged the remaining donations for the upcoming releif work in the next five to 10 years. Some of the projects include more village-building in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, fixing a hospital and homes in Thailand and sending an accessment team to Myanmar.

Some of the fruits in the relief work were reported at a press conference, according to Kyodo news. In Thailand, the Red Cross is building a kindergarten, a school campus, a clinic and a village.

It is also building 470 houses in four villages in Sri Lanka, 86 houses in one village of the Maldives, 350 houses in one village of Indonesia and a disaster preparedness center in Myanmar.








Eunice Or
Christian Today Correspondent