The Foreign Service Journal, February 2005

with provisions for online response, are also featured. Helpful links to related sites are also provided. The Web site for the U.N. Children’s Fund ( www.unicef.org ) is focusing on the particular problems of the millions of children affected in the disaster and its aftermath. The site has a “Tsunami Press Room” and on-the-scene reports from UNICEF workers in India, Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has several Internet projects that are integral to the relief effort. The Virtual Operations On-Site Coor- dination Center ( http://ocha.unog. ch/virtualosocc/login.asp?Action =newLogin ), wh ich acts as an online message board or chat room, is an effective tool to facilitate information exchange between responding gov- ernments and organizations through- out the relief operation. OCHA’s ReliefWeb ( www.reliefweb.int ) fea - tures the earthquake and tsunami in South and Southeast Asia. The site posts all the major documents of relief organizations working in the area as well as international news agency reports as they are issued. As of Jan. 4, about $2.5 billion had been contributed to the relief effort by governments and multinational financial institutions. Significantly, in Europe and the U.S., private dona- tions nearly matched official assis- tance, at $1.5 billion and $337 million respectively as of this writing. There are no figures as to how much of that is accounted for by online contribu- tions, but it is no doubt substantial. Here is a list of some of the aid agencies collecting donations for relief and rehabilitation work, and their Web addresses: • AmeriCares www.americares.org • American Jewish World Service www.ajws.org • American Friends Service Committee www.afsc.org • American Red Cross www.redcross.org • Catholic Relief Services www.catholicrelief.org • Doctors Without Borders www.doctorswithoutborders.org • International Medical Corps www.imcworldwide.org • Islamic Relief USA www.irw.org/asiaquak • Mercy Corps www.mercycorps.org • Oxfam America www.oxfamamerica.org • Save The Children www.savethechildren.org • United Methodist Committee on Relief www.gbgm-umc.org/umcor • Stop Hunger Now www.stophungernow.org • World Vision www.worldvision.org n C Y B E R N O T E S u 12 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5 50 Years Ago... Just prior to the opening of Congress, the Eisenhower administration announced that 3,002 federal employees had been dismissed as security risks in the first 16 months of its security pro- gram. Another 5,006 persons resigned with derogatory information in their files before their cases were acted upon. … The Department of State was list- ed with five dismissals for security reasons, and USIA was listed with two. — From “News to the Field,” FSJ , February 1955.