In this podcast, two activists involved in flood relief efforts in Pakistan compare the damage and response in 2011 with that of 2010, and then offer some advice as to how the government should be preparing for future emergencies.

A surgeon provides a free-of-cost operation on a seven-year-old girl with a cleft palate from a relief camp, causing the girl’s mother to say that “the floods had turned into a blessing for her.”

ICT and social media tools are being used to map and garner support for individual relief efforts.

By banning social networking websites, the authorities would be destroying the concept of citizen journalism in Pakistan and the noble causes they support – as well as the image of Pakistan around the world.