On the 26th December 2004, in the early morning, I received an alerted phone call. A big earthquake near Sumatra triggered a huge and terribly strong wave: the tsunami.
My mind goes immediately to those calm islands I have served as honorary consul since many years: Maldives. In this country we have more than 400 children affected by thalassaemia we follow directly.

We are the only foreign organization working (apart from the institutional ones, like UNICEF, for instance).

The bigger NGOs never paid attention to this small country, always stopping before the glossy image of "Paradise for rich people" of the catalogues of the travel agencies, which is not rewarding from the humanitarian policy return point of view.

Somebody told me: "What do they need? We cannot present a cooperation programme with Maldives: they would kill us at the Parliament".

We understand compassion for children is unlikely to rise, when their country is Maldives.

We understand the tragedy industry logic has to nourish itself on other numbers and backgrounds. Simply, it is not money-making enough.

We think having the possibility of helping somebody (children in particular), due to times and circumstances, our measure unit must be only Charity, and not opportunity.

So, after the tragic confirmation of disaster, we immediately took to action to arrange for the possible and necessary interventions.

Some days afterwards, we left carrying medicines against thalassaemia, swept away by the wave, and the first aid.

We were on the destroyed islands and we helped to open again the schools for the smallest children (on the beach) to help them to recover from that terrible shock.

We put into action our solidarity network in order for them not to feel alone, and we tried to see to the great number of needs coming from every look and every meeting.

Carlo Giacoma