UW-Madison views on the tsunami anniversary

A number of faculty, students and alumni of UW–Madison have keen, firsthand perspectives on the anniversary of the tsunami in Southeast Asia, based on recent trips to the region and assistance with relief efforts.

• Shisir Khanal, managing director of Sarvodaya USA. A Nepali with a master’s degree in international development from the UW–Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs, he started as a volunteer in tsunami relief and has since risen to manage the entire operation. Sarvodaya USA generates support, volunteers and outreach efforts for the largest non-government program in Sri Lanka, providing help for people in 15,000 villages.

  Khanal just returned from Sri Lanka after several weeks of observing tsunami relief efforts firsthand. He has developed a Web site, a database with nearly 8,000 contributors, published newsletters, coordinated international transfers of funds and has coordinated air travel for volunteers to Sri Lanka from Architects without Borders and Nonviolent Peaceforce. He can provide photographs, personal accounts and insightful observations about the state of Sri Lanka one year after the tsunami.

• Susan Kidd Webster, who teaches international social work and a course on homelessness at the School of Social Work. She just spent eight days in Sri Lanka visiting social service programs and villages affected by the tsunami. Her husband, Steve Webster, is a disaster preparedness specialist who consults internationally.
• Rick Brooks, Division of Continuing Studies outreach manager. Brooks was volunteer executive director of Sarvodaya USA when the tsunami hit December 26, and coordinated relief efforts for the next three months. In January, he attended the United Nations Conference on Natural Disasters in Kobe, Japan, and traveled to Sri Lanka in March and November. In the past year, he has spoken to more than 20 organizations in Madison, Wausau, Milwaukee, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Chicago and other cities; coordinated school and service club fund-raising projects; and worked with diplomats, environmental health professionals, corporate and community groups interested in tsunami relief.
• Colleen Condon, UW–Madison student. Condon, originally from Brookfield, has been to Sri Lanka twice, both times before the tsunami. The second trip was on a Wisconsin Idea Undergraduate Fellowship in the summer of 2004 to set up a field placement program for the School of Social Work. For more than six months after the tsunami, she worked with the Sarvodaya USA office, which so far has generated more than $3.2 million for tsunami relief. Condon graduated in May 2005. She wrote about tsunami relief in the first edition of “Illuminations,” the undergraduate journal of the humanities.
• Marian Weidner, a UW–Madison junior in rural sociology. Weidner just returned from Sri Lanka, where she was studying permaculture, the study of living in harmony with nature. Weidner is also pursuing certificates in East Asian studies and environmental studies.
• Derek Montgomery, a UW–Madison senior majoring in journalism and political science. As a photojournalist, he went to Sri Lanka on his own earlier this year, took photographs and wrote an essay on his experience for the Badger Herald student newspaper. Montgomery has stayed in contact with two Australian relief workers he befriended. He will be leaving the U.S. for a study abroad semester in Greece beginning Jan. 3.