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TV: Austin man creates way to help Typhoon victims

10:41 PM CDT on Monday, October 19, 2009

Jim Bergamo / KVUE News

The typhoon that flooded the Philippines almost a month ago has faded from the headlines, but one Austinite is still working to generate hope and financial relief for the storm victims.

Video

KVUE's Jim Bergamo reports.

>More KVUE News Video

Former Dell employee Greg Patrick recently started a website for victims of the typhoon called Social Donating.org. He set a modest goal of $500 dollars. So far the website has exceeded that raising $1,000 dollars and Patrick is hoping for more since many of the Filipino storm victims he knows so well have lost so much.

When typhoon Ondoy hit Manila, Philippines three weeks ago, Greg Patrick was on a different island about 8,000 miles away in Galveston.

"So I went on Facebook and I saw that all my Filipino friends had left all kinds of posts like I am stranded," Greg Patrick said.

While working for Dell, Patrick would visit the Philippines often as he helped establish the computer giant's call center in Manila.

"I don't know if I would have gotten this involved without personally seeing on Facebook my friends write these messages that water is chest high in their houses," Patrick said.

Those posts and the YouTube tribute video below touched Patrick so much he created a website to raise funds for the victims of the typhoon.

  

By logging on to Patrick's web site you can find out how to donate money or other services, see how much money has been raised, and read posts from storm victims who have been helped by those donations.

"I understand that when a story breaks, that is it and then maybe in like a week or two it starts to die down. But what I know is that in a week or two there is going to be over 80,000 people who are like still in desperate need of recovery," Patrick said.

David Patrick has taken a keen interest in his brother's project.

"It really hits home when you see little kids there who are just struggling and holding on to their parents trying to keep them out of the water," David Patrick said.

"If you cannot donate but yet you have got 400 friends on your Facebook page maybe one person can relate to a Filipino or can relate to the cause, then maybe they will be stirred enough to make a donation," Greg Patrick said.

If you can't afford to make a donation, or don't have the on-line or off-line skills that can help, the Patrick's simply ask for your prayers for the storm victims.