We know Alison Thompson’s interview in Issue 17 touched many of you. This Australia Day, her extraordinary spirit was recognised when she was awarded a MEDAL (OAM) OF THE ORDER OF AUSTRALIA IN THE GENERAL DIVISION for “service to humanitarian aid, particularly the people of the Peraliya region of Sri Lanka following the Boxing Day 2004 Tsunami.”
We’d exchanged a few emails with Alison lately, and knew she was planning on coming back to Australia (from New York) to receive the award (although we were sworn to secrecy), but nature had other plans. When the earthquake struck Haiti on 12 Jan, Alison being Alison shelved all her plans for an Australian summer holiday catching up with family to go straight there with Sean Penn, a couple of other friends. On 24 January, Alison wrote an email to her parents …
“Dante would describe it as hell here. There is no food and wAter and hundreds dying daily. The aid is all bottlenecked and not reaching here . The other day i assisted with amputation ( holding them down) while they used a saw to cut a young boys leg off with no pain killers…” The full email can be read here.
Photograph by Juliet Coombes
Alison Thompson : Issue 17 : Introduction
Alison Thompson has been charged by twelve hippos, nine elephants and two rhinos. She has travelled to all the continents of the world, including the South Pole. She is an Australian who has been living and working in New York for more than 20 years. While she’s tried many things like being a mathematics teacher and an investment banker, it’s in film-making, and its ability to move people to take action, that her passion lies. Being spurred into action is something Alison knows about first hand. When the World Trade Centre was hit on 11 September 2001, she was one of the first there to volunteer. It gave her a taste for volunteering and she realised how easy it could be. So, in 2004, when the ‘Boxing Day’ tsunami hit, she jumped on a plane to Sri Lanka. The footage she took during that time formed the basis for ‘The Third Wave’, a film about volunteering which has captured the souls of viewers from Cannes to Sydney.
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[...] DF is released quarterly, and each issue involves interviews with 5 remarkable individuals, united by their creativity, passion and integrity. I just don’t have the words to say how wonderful I find this publication. Dumbo’s blog from two days ago features an email from Alison Thompson, whose extraordinary spirit was recognised when she was awarded a medal of the Order of Australia in the general division for ’service to humanitarian aid. The email is written from Alison to her parents, after arriving in Haiti to help. I encourage you to read about Alison and her film about volunteering called The Third Wave [...]
Where would our world be without people like Alison and people like Kate to bring us her story?
You both inspire me to continue encouraging people to help the world to become a better place through http://howtohelpnow.wordpress.com/
thank you thank you thank you