Within a month of the Asian tsunami wreaking havoc across Asia on December 26 last year, a worldwide wave of compassion resulted in about US$7 billion being pledged in relief donations. It was an unprecedented amount of money generated in so short a time - and enough to make you wonder how many of the world's problems could be solved if everyone gave so freely and immediately, once a year.
As wonderful as the response was, however, things began to take a corporate turn, with companies verging on one-upmanship when it came to charity policies. Incentives to donate were splattered with corporate messages. The relief effort began to take on the shape of a giant advertising campaign.
You could call it cause and effect. It was the first time that such large-scale giving could be co-ordinated so quickly on a global scale, thanks to the internet and phone messaging - but there were times when you got the sense of a bandwagon being jumped on. Some countries close to the affected areas were accused of being a little too quick off the mark to promote the fact that their tourist destinations were unaffected.
Now that the immediate relief effort has done its job, the rebuilding of towns, villages and livelihoods is under way. The biggest threat is no longer disease or malnutrition: it's so-called compassion fatigue. And it's everywhere - perhaps making it the most dangerous of all post-disaster pestilences. 'Especially with the amount of funding required given the scale of reconstruction and rehabilitation needed by the many areas devastated,' says Kamalludin Abdullah Badawi, director and trustee of the Force of Nature Foundation and son of Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
After the disaster, he set up the Kuala Lumpur-based non-profit group with the help of private organisations and individuals from Malaysia and overseas.
Despite the pitfalls of trying to persuade people who have already dug deep into their pockets, the intention is to find new ways to persuade them to dig again. 'There's a risk of running into compassion fatigue or donor fatigue - ironically just when people are ready to pick up their lives once more with some help,' says Kamalludin. 'That's why we had to come up with different ways to generate awareness for the long-term needs of victims, which is different from the sort of needs that had to be addressed when the tsunami first struck.'
