More than £23m has been donated to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for the Haiti earthquake victims.
The £23m total includes only phone and online donations, with postal, corporate, SMS and other donations yet to be tallied.
While the appeal launched on Wednesday last week, the day after the earthquake struck just outside the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, the vast majority of the money came in following Friday’s television broadcast. £10m was donated in the 24 hours following Friday’s appeal, with a further £3m over Saturday-Sunday.
An extra £8m has been donated since the DEC’s last update yesterday, as media began to report the disaster is estimated to have caused upwards of 200,000 deaths in the poverty-stricken country.
Less than a week after the earthquake, the Haiti appeal has already garnered significantly more donations that the DEC's previous appeals for Gaza and the Congo.
“The response from the public has been absolutely overwhelming,” said DEC chief executive Brendan Gormley. “It does show that whatever financial concerns people are experiencing here in the UK, they feel a deep level of empathy for the people of Haiti, and will give whatever they can.”
“Our members are working round the clock to both meet urgent needs and plan for longer-term reconstruction, thanks to the continued generosity of the British public”
DEC members began distributing aid in Haiti over the weekend.
Donation banking problems
There have, however, been some public frustrations following reports on the BBC that some banks have been blocking certain account holders from donating to the appeal.
It has been reported that criminals sometimes use charity donations to test whether a stolen card has been stopped, prompting banks to block donations they deem suspicious. It is not clear, however, how many authentic donation attempts have been blocked.
A HSBC spokesperson said, “The vast majority of our customers' donations to charities are made successfully, and it is only cards following a suspicious pattern of transactions that may be declined."
Image courtesy of Action Aid.
