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UPDATE (May 28, 2008; 11:45 p.m. ET)— We have updated our :30 PSA with current statistics from the disaster. Please use that update which you can find HERE.
UPDATE (May 15, 2008; 7:56 a.m. ET)— UNICEF has now posted celebrity public service announcements on their You Tube Channel asking for donations to help raise funds for the Myanmar relief effort. Participants include Ben Stiller, Joel Madden, Nicole Richie and Tea Leoni. Please get these PSAs on the air. The military government has also allowed more relief workers into aid in the relief efforts but not enough to properly deal with the devastation.
UPDATE (May 13, 2008; 12:30 p.m. ET)— The New York Times reports that relief efforts are still being blocked by the Myanmar government. If and when (please be soon) that the government lets relief efforts in, the donations to UNICEF are going to be even more critical because the problem of disease and death only gets worse the longer its ignored. Please keep pushing the PSA’s to any media outlet you can.
UPDATE (May 9, 2008; 3:30 p.m. ET)— The web site Swiss Info is reporting that the United Nations will immediately resume aid flights to Myanmar and that one US Flight has been approved by the nations military government. Foreign aid workers are still restricted, though and I’m not clear how they plan to handle the issue of the government stealing UN relief supplies as reported earlier.
UPDATE (May 9, 2008; 12:00 p.m. ET)— NBC Nightly News senior producer Subrata De has posted two emails she has received from a friend of hers who has lived through the cyclone…you can read those emails here
UPDATE (May 9, 2008; 8:10 a.m. ET)— Thanks to my friend Joel Denver from All Access.com for this update via the Wall Street Journal:
May 9, 2008 –The United Nations said it would suspend all further aid shipments for survivors of last week’s devastating cyclone in Myanmar after the country’s ruling junta seized all aid material that had been flown in so far. The U.N.’s World Food Program “has no choice” but to suspend further shipments until the matter is resolved, WFP spokesman Paul Risley said. All “the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated,” he said, including 38 tons of high-energy biscuits.
The New York Times has its report here.
The UNICEF web site is still taking donations. My assumption is that at some point aid will be given and that funds will be needed. In the worst case, no funds donated will be able to be used in Myanmar BUT will be used to aid children when another international disaster strikes. The US Fund for UNICEF needs our financial support; let’s move forward and continue to promote this cause. Hopefully we’ll be ready to help Myanmar when allowed in.
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ORIGINAL POST
Frustrating as it has been for all nations, including the United States, to immediately get food, water and medicine into the areas of Myanmar ravaged by the recent cyclone, the challenge of having to pay for all the needed relief in the weeks, months and maybe years to come is going to be even more of a headache.
Today UNICEF issued an emergency appeal for financial contributions to help pay for all that will be needed. UNICEF is working with Myanmar’s (Burma’s) military government to coordinate relief efforts. It occurred to me that UNICEF will need to promote this fundraising appeal.
My personal experience with non-profits is they don’t always execute communication plans as fast as possible because of restrictions on manpower and money. I hope UNICEF proves me wrong and if they do get audio and video spots out on this appeal, ignore and delete what I am about to do.
I’m stepping in to what I assume will be UNICEF’s eventual communications plan for Myanmar fundraising without an invitation and without approval. Screw politics and procedures. I’m a broadcaster and this is the internet.
Let’s roll.
Attached are two public service announcements (PSA); one sixty seconds long, one thirty seconds long both explaining how to donate funds for the cyclone relief effort directly to UNICEF.
The scripts I wrote (also attached) were based on text lifted directly from the UNICEF web site dealing with the Myanmar relief effort.
audio’connell Voice Over Talent is not receiving any compensation for this, we don’t want any…nor are we looking for publicity for us.
We DO want publicity (and lots of it) for the PSA’s themselves and ask that if you directly know any radio station or television station program directors, internet radio stations or podcasters, please direct them here or email them the spots or scripts (if they want to record spots with their own voice talent, God bless ’em!).
PSA’s don’t do any good if they don’t get played and if people don’t respond to the call to action. Please promote the availability of these spots within whatever professional network you are a part of and encourage their use to help raise money the people in Myanmar who have been so terribly distressed.
And if you could throw UNICEF a couple of bucks in the effort, that would be good too.
Please note in the comment section of media to whom you have sent this to or (if you’re the media) what outlet you are from.
Thanks for being a good person.
SIXTY SECOND UNICEF MYANMAR APPEAL PSA
[audio:http://www.audioconnell.com/clientuploads/mp3/UNICEF_MyanmarPSA_60.mp3]
Click (or right click)here to download the the :60 PSA!
Click (or right click)here to download the the PSA script!
THIRTY SECOND UNICEF MYANMAR APPEAL PSA
[audio:http://www.audioconnell.com/clientuploads/mp3/UNICEF_MyanmarPSA_30.mp3]
Click (or right click)here to download the the :30 PSA!
Click (or right click)here to download the the PSA script!
Tags: commentary, commercials, public service announcement, radio, tv, UNICEF by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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