Massive rainfalls since December have left the east coast of Guyana flooded in over 40 inches of water. Guyana, a small Caribbean country on the tip of South America is now in its 26th day of the worst flood to hit the nation in over a century. The Guyana Chronicle, the country’s national newspaper, reports that nearly 300,000 Guyanese-about half the population of the country-have been affected by the flood.
Shelly Volcy, president of U of T’s Caribbean Connections Group, said that no family members of the group have been directly affected, but that the tragedy has saddened the group profoundly. The group, which just completed its annual fundraiser in November, is donating $300 to the Guyana Flood Relief efforts. Perry King, the public relations officer for Caribbean Connections, was born in Guyana and says since the flood hit, he has been keeping in close contact with his family back home. He says “the group should have something on the table” in the near future with regard to raising funds specifically for this disaster.
In the meantime, Toronto, which hosts one of the largest expat Guyanese populations in the world (second only to New York), has been the host of numerous fundraisers, with the help of the Guyana Consulate, to get desperately needed funds to the country. The United Nations Emergency Relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, was recently quoted as saying, “This emergency may have gone unnoticed outside Guyana in the aftermath of the tsunami.” With media outlets preoccupied with the coverage of the tsunami disaster and the success story of the generous aid given to those victims, death tolls mounting in a small, impoverished nation are slipping through the cracks.
