Tsunami relief topic of lecture

By Jaclyne Badal
The Collegian

Disaster relief programs are most effective when staffers are culturally sensitive to the groups they serve, according to one longtime humanitarian aid worker.

Fresno State’s anthropology students are particularly well equipped to provide humanitarian relief, both here and abroad, because their discipline studies cultures.

In her lecture Thursday night, Dr. Lucia Cargill, president and executive director of the American Overseas Medical Aid Association, told students to think of anthropology as a discipline with few limits.

“Anthropology, with a little tweaking, can include all the other humanities and many of the sciences, too,” she said.

Cargill drew on her own experiences working with victims of the Indonesian tsunami to explain the importance of showing cultural sensitivity when helping others.

She said many of the big-name non-governmental organizations that tried to help tsunami victims wasted time and money because they didn’t try to understand the needs and values of the Indonesian people.

By contrast, the local group, IBU4ACEH, was effective in providing medical and psychological services to the people of Indonesia because they were intimately acquainted with their religious beliefs and cultural practices.

“They would only go so far, because it’s only polite to go so far,” she said. “There you have to really go with the flow and not push, or you offend people.”

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