Today Indonesia increased the number dead in their country alone to over 160,000, which brings the total amount dead so far from the Tsunami to over 220,000.  The devastation is unimaginable. That is why Julia Lerman has been organizing a lot of efforts for a local charity. She approached me a week or two ago and wanted to try to organize a .NET Celebrity Auction on eBay where all proceeds go to a local charity. After a lot of hard work, we are about to make this happen.   

So that is why a bunch of us are going to auction an hour each of our consulting time to benefit the Tsunami victims of Banda Aceh.  ALL of the money will go to help the victims.

Within the next 48 hours the auction will appear on eBay. It will be a single “multibe item“ auciton where the 26 higest bidders pay their higest bid amount. The higest payers get to choose who they get the hour of time with (I am sure I will go second to last, Clemens will be last. )

The link to the auction will be here shortly, we are still working on the legal paperwork with eBay. Bookmark this post as I will put the link here and the start date as soon as we have it!

Here are the participants:

Michelle Leroux Bustamante, Kimberly L. Tripp, Jonathan Goodyear, Andrew Brust, Richard Campbell, Adam Cogan, Malek Kemmou, Jackie Goldstein, Ted Neward, Kathleen Dollard, Hector M Obregon, Patrick Hynds, Fernando Guerrero, Kate Gregory, Joel Semeniuk, Scott Hanselman, Barry Gervin, Clemens Vasters, Jorge Oblitas, Stephen Forte, Jeffrey Richter, John Robbins, Jeff Prosise, Deborah Kurata, Goksin Bakir, Edgar Sánchez, Thomas Lee, J. Michael Palermo IV, Vishwas Lele, and John Lam.

FAQ:

Who will this auction benefit?

In the long run, the auction is to benefit the people of Aceh Province , Sumatra , who have had their island destroyed and lost nearly 100,000 of their people. The waves may be gone, but the devastation continues and the fear of many more dying from disease continues.

We are trying to help, by assisting Aceh Aid at IDEP, an organization that is local and doing amazing work.

There is an area on their website devoted to this work: http://www.idepfoundation.org/aceh_aid.html. (www.AcehAid.org will take you right to this page). I recommend that if you are interested in knowing who you are doing this for, you go peruse that website, read the updates, read about the volunteer search, etc.

WHAT IS IDEP?

IDEP is a small, Indonesian NGO, based in Ubud, Bali . Completed projects over the years have included community based development, sustainable living initiatives, permaculture training, waste management, organic gardens, recycling, etc. The focus is on helping people to help themselves. IDEP's founding director, Petra Schneider is a US -born, Indonesian citizen. The demonstrated and reproducible success of IDEP's small projects in local communities has earned the team an excellent reputation.

IDEP AND DISASTER RESPONSE/RELIEF/RECOVERY

At the time of the Bali bomb, about two years ago, IDEP was an important element of the network of local NGOs and other supporters that quickly responded to the tragedy, in various ways, not only immediately after the bomb, but during the recovery process for the various communities involved. Following shortly thereafter, IDEP received funding from USAid to create a comprehensive set of disaster management materials for Indonesian communities, aimed at children, families, and local leaders (official and unofficial). The materials are in the Indonesian language and suitable for use in rural and urban settings. These materials, including a booklet for children about Tsunami preparedness, were finished just weeks ago, but had not yet been disseminated to communities. Then the tsunami struck.

WHAT IS ACEH AID AT IDEP

Only hours after the news of the tsunami reached Bali, the same network of NGOs and individuals in Bali who had been involved in the relief efforts for the Bali bomb, reanimated and went into action. We started something called the "Aceh Aid Bucket Brigade" (see website), creating and deploying one-family-one-bucket multi-material aid packages from the hands of donors in Bali to the field in Sumatra . We began sending highly skilled volunteers, well-matched to the task within two days of the tsunami (Sam Schultz, Lee Downey, Oded Carmi and others). Our relief, and later, recovery programs in response to the Tsunami are now focused on two fronts. One is direct aid from Medan by road to areas around Banda Aceh. The other is this remarkable joint effort (nothing short of heroic), to the islands off the west coast of Sumatra , which as of yet, have not been receiving aid from any other channels that we know of.

Fine Print:

About the auction: We have 25 amazing consultants and trainers in this auction. Each person has donated one hour of consulting time, to be provided by email or phone (at expense of bidder). The consultant and winner are free to agree upon other arrangements. It will be an Ebay "multi-item" auction where all of the consultants are in the same auction. The top 25 bids will be the winners. The highest bidder will get first choice of which consultant they would like to work with. Payments will be made DIRECTLY to Aceh Aid at IDEP's PayPal account (acehaid@tides.org).

A note about multi-item auctions. Normally and EBay multi-item auction is set up to auction off identical items, such as hammers. Given that they are of equal value, the multi-item auction rules state that the winning bidders would each pay the amount of the lowest winning bid. The .NET Celebrity Auction for Aceh Aid at IDEP will not work this way. Since this is a charity auction, we expect the winning bidders to pay the amount of their final bid. Allowing bidders to select consultants based on their bid rank justifies this, but moreso, the fact that this is a charity auction justifies this.

A note about your tax-deductible contribution. All contributions will be made through a PayPal account that goes to Tides Foundation (www.tidesfoundation.org) which is a  US-based 501c3 non-profit, permitting tax-deductible contributions and supported by many corporate matching programs. Tides Foundation's EIN is 51-0198509. Tides Foundation then forwards the full amount of the donations directly to Aceh Aid at IDEP.