Mari Ness - Myanmar

Whatever you want to call the country, it's in bad shape right at the moment. Because this is Myanmar, getting relief there is proving difficult. Here's some organizations attempting to help:

American Red Cross

Directrelief.org.

The American Burmese Buddhist Association.

Unicef.

Press reports are saying that the World Food Programme is also heading to the area, but I couldn't find any info on their website.

Note: I understand that people have two concerns about sending aid, or attempting to send aid, to Myanmar: one, the question of if the aid can even get there, given the government restrictions, travel issues, and general infrastructure collapse, and two, that sending support might end up benefitting the Myanmar government – some are arguing that a disaster of this sort could help destroy the government. I don't have a good answer for the first point: for the second, I'll just note that historically, natural disasters have not always brought down governments.

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The storm happened to pass over the Irrawaddy river, one of the homes of the Irrawaddy river dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris), aka some of the cutest dolphins on the planet. (They blow bubbles and spit at people, and also have been trained to help in cooperative fishing efforts.) For political reasons, no one except for biologist Tint Tun has been able to do much research or conservation on Irrawaddy dolphins in Myanmar, but even before this, the dolphins were on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. I'm not sure any of us can do much to help that subspecies, so instead, I'll direct your attention towards the Mekong Dolphin Conservation Project, which is working to help these dolphins in Cambodia.