Ask YC: How can I help in Japan?

I appreciate the thought, but it takes $2k to bring you here, which is enough to put an out of work Japanese twenty-something on the project for a month. He's literate and can understand directions.<p>I understand there are charitable traditions in which one's personal suffering incurred matters more than results. In this case, you could work really really hard at project management in the US, say it was for Japan, and donate half your salary there and half here. Everyone would end up better off, because you're vastly more effective doing that than your are being an illiterate manual laborer.

You probably can't.<p>When disasters occur in impoverished countries with poor social infrastructure, there is a great need for people to set up communications networks, provide medical care, hand out vaccines, et cetera; but Japan isn't an impoverished infrastructure-lacking country. They have a functioning government and lots of technically skilled personnel; in the rare cases they do need something, they will know and ask for it -- unlike places like post-quake (and arguably, even pre-quake) Haiti, where the minimally-functioning government had no idea what resources the relief workers on the ground needed.

If you are a hacker and have one or more website put up the donation code on your websites, that will help a lot. The people there are great in helping each other but they need outside support that will cost a lot of money, so for you the best way to help them is by donation and helping to rise donations, I suppose. Thanks

Donate blood, donate money.<p>Narita isn't even running flights and transportation out to that area is untenable at best, foolhardy at worst.

Thanks to everyone for the information.