Help us ensure they have what they need when a crisis hits

Once again seafaring communities have been decimated by a super typhoon destroying homes and claiming hundreds of lives.

Typhoon Odette (Rai) struck the Philippines the week before Christmas causing hundreds of thousands to flee for their lives and flattening shelters, schools and hospitals.

In the coming weeks and months, as families try to rebuild their shattered lives, many people will be in urgent need of financial help to put a roof over their heads, pay for medical bills and feed children whose parents have been lost or hurt.

Our new Sea Change Fund will enable us to respond immediately to emergency welfare cases or when lives are in danger.

Already, since the pandemic began, we have seen requests for welfare grants to help pay for food, rent, medicine and schooling increase by 850 per cent.

We need your help to answer these pleas.

Will you be the Sea Change in these families' lives helping them survive these desperate times?

Seafarers like Rollan, whose baby daughter’s life support machine was turned off when he was miles away from home.

He had not met his little girl - and although he managed to cut short his contract by a few weeks, he hadn’t even left his ship when baby Meccah died at just 10 days old.

Desperate and distraught, Rollan and Rea could only console one another by phone as they struggled through every parent’s worst nightmare.

“I had asked to leave the ship early because I was so excited to see, embrace and take care of my newborn baby,” said Rollan, who has spent almost 100 months at sea since he began working as a seafarer in 2009.

“When I found out how unwell she was it was very stressful. I cannot go home easily because of the pandemic; they couldn’t relieve me straight away because it was hard to find another Filipino seafarer ready. Every hour, every minute, I was communicating with my family and keeping an eye on them. I felt so helpless seeing my wife in so much pain and distress and seeing my baby with so much hospital equipment around her little body.”

Sailors’ Society supported the couple emotionally and financially with a grant towards the hospital bill for the baby’s treatment.

Will you be the sea change in seafarers’ lives?

Sadly, the couple's agony only spiralled when Rea was rushed to hospital with appendicitis with partial intestinal obstruction only a week after they were reunited.

And then, a week later, Rollan fell seriously ill with Covid-19.

“It started just days after I was vaccinated. I had muscle pain, then a fever and cough and by the fourth day I lost my sense of smell and taste and was struggling to breathe.”

He could not get admitted to hospital because of the surge in cases, so had to be given oxygen by his family in quarantine at home.

“I felt so sick. I had such difficulty breathing. It was a very tough time.”

Rollan eventually recovered and the couple, who have two other children aged seven and almost three, began preparing for him to return to sea.

“I don’t want to mount up any more debt, but I am also watching Rea to see if she is ready to live without me by her side for eight months. I am worried that she will think of Meccah and get very upset - and I won’t be around to comfort her.”

Rea added: “He is the one who will make me smile and eases the pain.”

Donating to the Sea Change Fund will help ease the pain for seafarers and their families across the world facing the aftermath of natural disasters, unemployment, sickness or abandonment, often as a result of the pandemic.

Please help today - your donation could put food on a table, ease financial stresses for a grieving family or keep a child in school.

Seafarers - the key workers of the sea - have kept world trade moving despite huge personal sacrifices. They ensure we have medication, PPE, food and 90 per cent of everything we own and use.

Giving to the Sea Change Fund today will ensure they have what they need when crises hit.

We all rely on seafarers - and seafarers rely on us.

Please help today

Your donation could put food on a table, ease financial stresses for a grieving family or keep a child in school.

0

could pay for a top up card so that a seafarer can call home when there’s a crisis

0

could put food on the table for seafaring family who’ve lost income due to covid*

0

could fund school fees for the child of a seafarer who is ill and unable to work

*Based on five days’ basic groceries for a family of five in the Philippines

PS. We have calls from hundreds of seafarers in crisis every year, in desperate need of our help - and often thousands of miles from loved ones. By donating today, you can give them the care and financial help they so urgently need. Thank you for being the sea change in a seafarer’s life.


To find out more about applying for a grant, go to: sailors-society.org/grants

Join us on social