help_pakistan Fandom Auction
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One-fifth of Pakistan is under water.
One-fifth. That's, you know, kind of a lot.
The floods that are covering the country were slow-growing. The damage probably won't be all seen for a month or more, as the water slowly recedes, and it becomes possible to count. How many people were lost. How many starved, or died of communicable diseases or injuries. How much farmland was destroyed, and how many will go hungry because of it. How many houses washed away. How much infrastructure wrecked.
We're still cleaning up after Katrina, after all.
For many complicated reasons, aid has been slow to arrive in Pakistan. (This BBC article includes some suppositions as to why, though I might suggest not reading the "reader-submitted comments" if you need to keep your blood pressure under control.) But the need continues to grow, and donations don't stop being helpful at a certain point.
I've been feeling quite defeatist about reading things about the floods. I'm not in a financial position to give anything right now. And yet, Pakistan is a country I feel an emotional attachment to; it's impossible to have spent the past decade as I have without having done so. The places on the news are familiar to me, though I haven't been to any of them. (Sidenote: when did I miss the memo about them renaming NWFP? I really liked that as a province name. Oh, well, I'll just have to content myself with knowing what Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh means.)
Why
I've also been frustrated by the lack of attention to the Pakistan floods in the internet circles I run it. Few LJ posts; few Facebook links; little to nothing on the blogs I read. Why are we all pretending Pakistan doesn't exist right now? Why, when 20 million people are displaced in a Muslim country in the middle of Ramadan, is the entire world not talking about it?
help_pakistan is making me feel slightly better.
help_pakistan is a fannish auction, along the lines of help_haiti, to bring our community together to see what we can do to help. There are already at least 700 offers, which you can search through on their delicious account, or page through in the comm.
I've got three offers up:
- One for a 1000 word fanfic in any of my fandoms
- One for a 1000 Caseyverse fic
- One for a fanmix or original mixtape
Not only do I want to get folks to donate money for my dubious talents, but I want to encourage others to do the same. So:
- I'll be keeping a list of folks on my flist who are making donations, much like dashakay did for help_haiti. Support someone you know! If you're participating, comment to this entry, and I'll get a list going.
- To encourage people to sign up, anyone on my flist who offers something gets to give me a drabble prompt, and I will write it before the auction period is up.
- And, to encourage people to bid, if you bid in any auction--not just mine--and lose, I'll write a drabble for you too, free of charge.
I have no idea if I'll be able to offer to write for anybody who wants to pay, as I did for help_haiti, because of my scheduling commitments this fall--but if it looks possible, I'll make an offer like that again.
And, of course, if you want to donate without getting anything in return, this list contains a list of places to donate.