On January 7th, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake shook the southern coast of Puerto Rico. It damaged 10 percent of buildings in the area and collapsed several schools. The people of Puerto Rico haven’t experienced an earthquake in 100 years but are still recovering from Category 5 Hurricane Maria in 2017. Frequent tremors have people terrified and sleeping outdoors in fear of more collapses.
100% of donations will go to reconstruction and recovery efforts, including aiding several collapsed schools.
In Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, several indigenous tribes have lived for millenniums. For eons, the annual flooding of the Omo River has provided the water they need to survive the harsh climate. A new, $1.6 billion, 1870-megawatt dam built upstream cut off the water supply in 2016 to the tribes, now numbering about 200,000 people. While the dam is a great engineering feat, these indigenous tribes’ lives, culture and traditions are in danger of being lost forever. One solar-powered irrigation system can water 25 acres of land and provide crops to feed 200 people.
In earthquake disasters, school structures are disproportionally affected, often putting tens of thousands of children’s lives at risk. Donate now to help children and schools in disaster zones.
More than 30,000 children died in collapsed schools in China in 2008. In Haiti, 2.8 million children lacked access to education after a magnitude-7.0 earthquake shut down thousands of damaged schools in 2010. In Nepal, more than 7,000 schools sustained heavy damage or collapsed following a magnitude-7.8 seismic event in 2015. Our focus is on seismically upgrading schools – safeguarding the lives of those most vulnerable.
Miyamoto Relief is a technical nonprofit that works globally to sustain life in at-risk communities through engineering. We do this to prevent more loss of life, by advising whether school buildings are safe to occupy.