These ideas are relevant and most important. Personal identity is both fragile and extremely strong. It takes a special bravery to encourage people to be themselves, particilarly if the customs, values, and culture are different from that of the encourager.

Perhaps a project that might be useful is to encourage micro-finance to aid entrepreneurs to develop their own country's economic base. In Canada there are many surveys pointing to the fact that the small business is the employer providing most of the new jobs. Are there any sources of information about economic structures in the countries affected by the Tsunami?

As a Nobel prize has been awarded for the idea of developing micro financial instituions, there seems to be a topic to be discussed.

Perhaps a push should happen to bring this topic to the forefront. Local identification and control of approaches to solve local problems, while scary to the aiders, seems to be much more important than foisting more ideas from the top (givers) to the bottom (receivers).

Margaret Sanford