How You Can Help Victims in the Philippines Right Now

This post is part of an ongoing series on Shine presented byRally.org, the crowdfunding site for social good.Rally explores thousands of user stories to find and share with you their most inspiring examples of people helping people across the country and around the world.


Global relief operations are doing their best to help the victims of Haiyan Typhoon in the Philippines, but still, many communities are suffering. A recent survey from Pew Research Center
found that so far Americans are giving less to Haiyan relief efforts than they did in the aftermath of earlier high-profile natural disasters.

Many of us at home want to help, but we're faced with this challenge: how can we give the people of the Philippines the support they need? There is no easy answer to the challenges facing the millions of people who are trying to rebuild their lives. But we believe that fundamentally, giving to starts when you connect with a story.


Rally.org has created a special collection page (rally.org/for/relief) rounding up a wide range of nearly 30 relief campaigns to help the people of the Philippines. The basic idea is this: since each cause has its own unique purpose, potential supporters can learn about and donate to the ones that resonate with them the most.


A few examples of these causes are:

Supporting indigenous communities in remote areas: Land is Life (rally.org/landiflife) is making a big impact for indigenous communities in remote areas through collaboration with grassroots organizations on the ground. This non-profit network is working with local Philippine organizations it has partnered with for decades to support the urgent needs of more than 16,000 indigenous families on the Panay, Mindoro and Palawan islands. A recent New York Times article written by Andrew Jacobs highlighted the vast challenges in trying to meet the needs of people in more remote areas, in addition to those that have been hit the hardest.

Feeding loved ones and neighbors: Lorena Llevado Sellers (rally.org/typhoonreliefphilippines) is from a small village called Guinob-an in Eastern Samar, which was the first that was hit by the typhoon. She's looking raise $6,000 to get 100 sacks of rice into the village, where many of her family members are still living, to feed the population of 1,000 for 10 days.

Quenching thirst with clean water: Waves for Water (rally.org/wavesforwater) is supplying community centers, refugee camps and individual families in the hardest hit areas with portable filtration systems to give them access to clean water. They're looking to raise money for 200 filtration systems (each costs $50), which will give 20,000 typhoon victims clean water for five years.

We're finding that these causes are creating a unique entry point into an otherwise overwhelming story of devastation, by inviting potential donors to forge personal connections with stories about individuals and grassroots organizations who want to help.

We now have the technology to enable community-giving as we never have before. So let's harness that power for a greater good to incite organized, collective action around the causes we believe in. Visit rally.org/for/relief to find a cause to get behind today.