The response to the tsunami has been staggering, with Irish people alone donating more than €50 million. People will analyse for a long time to come why there has been such an outpouring of generosity, writes Breda O'Brien.
Perhaps it was the sheer scale of the devastation, or the fact that a massive, natural force destroying all in its path reminds us of how fragile our human defences really are. Or perhaps it was the juxtaposition of Christmas and carnage, or even the fact that Irish people have grown rich enough to make Thailand a familiar holiday destination. Whatever the reason, the response has been astounding.
It seems churlish to suggest that there could be any negative side-effects of such spontaneous giving. However, some projects have already begun to feel the effect of the fact that so much attention has been devoted to disaster relief in South East Asia. No one begrudges a cent given to tsunami victims, but there are others in equally difficult situations.
For example, take Kiloloron, a little village that sounds as if it just might be in Ireland. Instead, it is on the Pacific coast, about five hours from Manila in the Philippines. The only Irish link I know of is a human dynamo, Helen Mitchell, a lay woman from Dublin working in a diocese about three hours from Manila.
Helen's day involves everything from involvement in a literacy project for street children, to homework clubs for kids in squatter settlements, to working as an advocate for tribal people.
Yet, somehow, she still manages to find time to help with a project in Kiloloron, run by an English Sister of Sion, Anne Brittain, even though it is hours of travel away from where Helen is based.
Kiloloron is in an area of extreme poverty, where the environment has been devastated by indiscriminate logging. Sr Anne decided to start a women's co-operative called Nature's Garden, to capitalise on the women's creativity and talent.
They started making handmade paper products, beautiful, intricate greeting cards and notebooks that are each a miniature work of art. Some 47 women are involved in the project, which may sound small, but that number of adults earning steady incomes has wrought measurable change.
For the past three years, they had been making a modest profit, which was ploughed back into the project, or into wage advances for the women, which allowed them to access electricity, or to support their children's schooling.
The co-operative provides an alternative source of income to the logging, and is environmentally friendly because it uses renewable products such as banana trunk and cogon grass.
Then, at the end of last November, disaster struck: there was a flash flood, followed by landslides. The logging had felled the trees that anchored the landscape, so soil and water began to move downwards, with devastating effects. Three towns were buried under mud and logs, along with the village of Kiloloron, where 200 homes were flattened. One of the women in the co-operative, Edna, lost her 3½-year-old son.
Most of the women were left homeless, and are living in temporary tarpaulin shelters or with relatives.
Worst of all, while the women's workplace is still structurally sound, the equipment they had built up slowly and painfully was all swept away. A pulping machine, a cooling vat and a trough for paper-making are all gone.
The indomitable hope in the hearts of the people meant that the only option was to begin again, with mortar and pestles instead of modern equipment.
The Nature's Garden co-operative illustrates that people do not need handouts as much as they need viable means of making a living with dignity. The sisters also operate a Grameen bank. Unlike conventional banks, a Grameen bank offers credit to the poorest of the poor, particularly to women, with no demand for collateral, so that they can create income-generating small businesses.
However, there is only so much that can be achieved within the area itself. The sisters use networks of friends to sell the Nature's Garden products, and Helen Mitchell enlisted the willing help of her friends to sell still more. Gorta, the Irish development agency, has been an important and supportive customer. Valuable and appreciated as they are, Nature's Garden needs now to move beyond circles of friends into the market of fairly traded goods, with regular orders stretching for two or more years ahead, if the project is to develop to its full potential.
Many people will immediately agree with the need not to neglect other poverty-stricken areas because of compassion for tsunami victims, but interest quickly drops away when one begins to talk about tackling the structures in the world which keep the developing world poor.
It is as if such issues are too huge to tackle, so people prefer to retreat into generous, if sporadic, giving. Even moving to regular debits to a reputable organisation would be a help. We can also look at our lifestyles. How much of what goes into our shopping baskets, without a thought, is fairly traded?
However, most people quail at the thought of going still further, of attempting to lobby on behalf of the developing world. Yet this can be done in very simple ways. For example, there is no way the Government would have reneged on its promise to meet the UN target of donating 0.7 per cent of GDP in development aid, if it thought it was going to meet angry voters on the doorsteps as a result. It is banking on our short memories, and on the fact that more pressing and local issues will concern us by the time of the next election.
Most of us feel guilt that there is such a short window of concern for tragedy, and that our attention will slowly drift away from the aftermath of the tsunami, as it drifted away from Bam a year ago, and Ethiopia a decade ago. Yet guilt alone is a kind of luxury, which allows us to suffer just enough to feel that we are nice people, but not enough to make changes as a result.
The people of Kiloloron, and thousands of places like them, do not want our guilt. They want our help, so that they can get to a situation where they can help themselves and others.