Toronto, ON—World Vision is airlifting more than 4,000 tents and 5,500 tarps on a cargo flight donated by Air Canada from Toronto, on Saturday October 22, 2005, to provide shelter for some of the 600,000 homeless families in quake-hit Pakistan in response to yesterday’s urgent UN appeal.

“Children are already freezing to death,” said Dirk Booy, vice-president of Canadian and international programs with World Vision Canada. “World Vision is racing to provide tents, tarps and blankets to prevent further suffering in children and their families already reeling from the trauma of losing everything.”

World Vision airlifts from Italy, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, the U.S., Singapore, Australia and Austria, have been carrying emergency supplies for distribution in some of the hardest-hit areas of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province since October 12, 2005. More shipments are planned in the coming weeks. Food, tents, tarps, water containers and purification tablets, medical supplies, blankets, cook-sets, personal hygiene items and children’s winter coats and clothing are arriving in bulk World Vision airlifts daily.

Delivery of these goods to desperate communities in remote, mountainous areas has been hampered by poor weather and landslides. To meet this challenge, World Vision is airlifting four large trucks to Pakistan to support logistics and ensure that transportation of supplies to World Vision’s bases in Mansehra and Balakot moves swiftly.

“When we were doing our assessments in one community, no one had shelter and the prospect of a tent nearly induced panic,” said John Schenk, a Canadian aid worker for World Vision in Pakistan. “Wide-eyed villagers elbowed themselves to the front of the crowd to make their cases. The most fearful looked to be the poorest.”

World Vision is an international Christian humanitarian relief and development organization working in more than 90 countries, providing help to more than 85 million people each year.