New Zealand Christchurch Earthquake Appeal

It has now been three months since the 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand, on February 22, 2011, causing widespread damage and tragic loss of life.  Since then, more than $73 million has been raised for recovery and reconstruction in the Christchurch area.  Rather than try to condense the massive amounts of media coverage the reconstruction efforts have received, I thought I'd list a few concrete numbers and examples of projects undertaken with the funds raised:

• $3.5 million will be used to help restore the city's playing fields, in time for winter sports for school-aged children.
• The Appeal Trust has donated $554,000 to help deliver sport and recreation programs for young people in Christchurch. Some schools are sharing sites due to damage, so students are attending morning or evening classes and have lost opportunities for sports and recreation. The hubs will run sport, recreation, leadership, dance, and music activities.
• Orion, Christchurch's electricity distribution lines company, assisted by other lines companies for New Zealand, worked constantly to restore power in the initial aftermath of the earthquake. They erected a new 66 kV overhead line to get power to Christchurch's eastern suburbs, a project that would have normally taken six or seven weeks to achieve, in 2.5 days.  Power was restored to 82% of households within 5 days and to 95% within two weeks (source: Wikipedia.org).

If you want to follow updates from the Christchurch Earthquake appeal more regularly than these project updates, the Appeal has its own Facebook page you can visit: http://www.facebook.com/ChristchurchEarthquakeAppeal.  They admittedly discuss more about fundraising than rebuilding expenditures, but I found it a helpful source for some of the information above.