Davenport woman helping tsunami victims, one volunteer at a time
Published: May 17, 2005
For three weeks, Michel Pontarelli spent her mornings braving 103-degree heat to clean up debris and trash from a shore in Sri Lanka. By the end of her trip, she had lost 10 pounds and had cleared two miles of coastline.
Pontarelli, director of the Office of Global Affairs at St. Ambrose University, Davenport, spent her April vacation assisting the tsunami-relief efforts in Sri Lanka. Her experience with the Sri Lankan government and fellow volunteers changed her view of volunteering.
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Pontarelli said. “We need to do more because what we’ve done hasn’t reached them.”
Pontarelli, 49, said the Sri Lankan government has received millions in private donations from organizations. However, she said the results of aid efforts were barely visible in areas controlled by the Tamal Tigers, a rebel group that has been in conflict with the government for nearly two decades.
“In my opinion, no aid is getting to the people,” she said. “The government is just sitting on it.”
Pontarelli volunteered with i-to-i, a British organization that puts volunteers to work around the world. Because many non-governmental organizations focused their attention on the east coast, she spent her time in a refugee camp in Kalutara on the west coast, clearing debris from nearby shores and houses and working with children in the refugee camp.
Unfortunately, the Sri Lankan government did not make relief efforts any easier, she said.
“The government has declared that nobody can rebuild within 100 meters of the water,” she said. “Most are fishermen who live there. They have nowhere else to go.”
Cultural and psychological barriers also hampered relief efforts, she said.
“A lot of fishermen won’t go out because they’re afraid of the water,” she said. “Many won’t eat fish because they’re afraid the fish have been feeding off dead bodies.”
As a result, the price of fish — a main staple of the local diet — skyrocketed.
Despite the challenges, she was impressed with other volunteers and the efforts of local individuals. Pontarelli met a Sri Lankan native who had started his own recycling program. She also met four volunteers — three from the United States and one from Ireland — who laid the groundwork financially for relief efforts in Peraliya. These individuals made such a huge impact that she plans to donate directly to them in the future.
“It was a good lesson for me,” she said. “Find somebody who you know who is doing work on the ground and give directly to them.”
Carol Miller, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross in Washington, D.C., said aid often gets to disaster zones slowly because of the sheer number of organizations that are drawn in to do the work.
Matthew Perry, who traveled to Sri Lanka from Washington, D.C., as a team leader for the American Red Cross, said it is unusual for private donors to give money to governments.
“To be frank, they never asked us for money,” he added.
Although Pontarelli’s trip was not sponsored by St. Ambrose, she gave a presentation to an international economics class when she returned. Economics Professor Wayne Oberle said his students later spent about 45 minutes minutes discussing Pontarelli’s presentation.
“It was very real and very different from our primary focus on textbooks and newspapers; trying to figure out our national economy and how it affects our global situation,” Oberle said.
“We had a student make a comment, ‘Oh, my god, do we Americans ever take life for granted, because these people have trouble surviving,’ ” he said.
Pontarelli created a special account called QC Cares at Wells Fargo Bank locations in the Quad-Cities to accept donations for the volunteers and programs she discovered during her trip.
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