If you are interested in donating to Rokpa International on behalf of The Orphanage School in Yushu, please see the following information:

UPDATED: To donate anywhere outside of China (besides the UK), please visit the Rokpa Yushu Relief site. Here you can find account information for the preferred currency in which you wish to donate money. Your payment will be made directly to Rokpa’s Switzerland headquarters, where the money can be quickly obtained for relief use in Yushu.

Additionally, you can now pay through PayPal via Rokpa’s Yushu Relief blog. Simply click on the PayPal button and follow instructions.

For those living in the UK, please refer to the Rokpa UK site, originally linked on this post, for information on donating in British Pounds.

In recent days, WildChina has been working with our local partners to get on-the-ground knowledge of the Yushu tragedy, and to provide needed supplies and aid.

Since our last post on Yushu, we have been notified of the following:
- WildChina’s Europe Team Director, Veronique, hopes that the truck she helped coordinate to bring supplies to Yushu has arrived to the area. Since the road from Nansheng to Yushu was damaged by the earthquake, traffic has been slower.
- At this point, villages and other local areas outside of Yushu proper need the most aid.
- Volunteers are having some difficulty with relief efforts due to the language barrier and altitude sickness.
- One of our local Yushu partners, who was previously deemed unharmed but was unreachable, has been located and we are cooperating with him to distribute tents.

WildChina has decided to take a three-fold approach to our aid for those suffering in Yushu, which includes two NGOs and aid for our local partners and friends affected by the earthquake.
- Local partners: we are donating money to purchase medicine for our local partners’ families, in order to better facilitate their and their loved ones’ recovery from this tragedy.
- Orphans: we are donating money to The Orphanage School, which is run by international NGO Rokpa, to help those children orphaned in the region.
- Monks: we will also be donating to the Yushu chapter of Himalayan Consensus, an NGO dedicated to ethnic diversity and cultural sustainable development. The coordinator, Laurence Brahm, has sent goods to Damkar monastery where WildChina visits during journeys for the Tibetan Yushu Horse Festival.

How can you get involved in these aid efforts?
- For The Orphanage School/Rokpa, please visit their website and scroll to the bottom of the page on how to give Single and Regular donations online and via mail.
- To donate to Himalayan Consensus or WildChina’s local partners’ families, please email Alex at alex.grieves@wildchina.com with the subject line “Yushu donation.” Alex can provide you with contacts and donation information.

UPDATE: Follow Rokpa’s Yushu Relief blog for up-to-date information on developments in the area.

Have more questions about the situation in Yushu? Have other news from Qinghai, and ways to help? Please email Alex at alex.grieves@wildchina.com.

In addition to our efforts to provide emergency housing for earthquake victims, WildChina’s Europe Director, Veronique d’Antras, is working with a relief group to provide warm clothing, food, money and medical supplies to the area. The group will leave tomorrow (Saturday) morning for Yushu with their supplies. Their efforts are part of a quickly-moving influx of aid workers in recent days to the southern Qinghai area.

(Image via China Daily)

d’Antras is also working with the Yushu Orphanage School, in conjunction with WildChina’s local partner and Rokpa, an international NGO, to assist in evacuating the orphans and other family members to the countryside. Together, they are working to remove the children from the area as quickly as possible. In the meantime, they hope that these children will be housed in WildChina’s donated tents that are currently being set up.

Outside of our relief efforts, WildChina is closely monitoring the situation on the ground in Qinghai through communication with our local partners. To date, we have heard the following:

- Electricity is down in the area, and it is thus difficult to communicate with those who either no longer have cell service or whose phones have run out of power.
- Structures in Yushu are unsafe, and survivors are trying to vacate the area as quickly as possible.
- The children from the orphanage and school in Yushu are alive, although some have been injured. Sadly, two teachers have perished, and other orphanage staff have suffered injuries.
- The director of the orphanage recently met with Premier Wen Jiabao.

For more information on the situation in Yushu, please see the following articles and media:
- Latest updates: Qinghai earthquake (via China Daily)
- Donations, supplies flood into quake-hit NW China region (via Xinhua)
- Rescuers race against time (via China Daily)
- Video: Quake kills hundreds in Western China (via New York Times)

WildChina will update our blog as new information becomes available.

WildChina wishes to send our deepest condolences to the victims of Wednesday morning’s 7.1-magnitude earthquake in Yushu, Qinghai province (northwestern China, bordering Tibet). Our thoughts are with our local Qinghai partner and his staff as they and their families deal with the aftermaths of this tragedy.

China’s official news service, Xinhua, is currently reporting a death toll of 617, with 313 people missing and 9,110 injured.  A  search and rescue operation is currently underway, with the central government allocating $29.3 million for disaster relief.

WildChina is also taking action: our eco-friendly camping tents used for our signature Tibetan Yushu Horse Festival journey are now being used in Yushu to house earthquake victims. Our team in China will continue to monitor the situation on the ground and provide updates.