Project Pakistan, December 2005 In December 2005 we organized, with the help of Wood Road School and it's caring Principal Mr. Scott Rocco, staff, students, and parents, a shipment of one twenty foot cargo container from Hillsborough, NJ to the Kashmir area of Pakistan. The shipment contained clothing, blankets, and other materials. The earthquake known as the South Asia earthquake or the Great Pakistan earthquake of 2005, was a major earthquake. The Pakistani government's official death toll was 73,276, while officials say nearly 1,400 people died in Indian-administered Kashmir and fourteen people in Afghanistan. As a result of this earthquake hundreds of thousands of people became homeless and food and shelter in those remote parts were simply unavailable. We shipped our container to the port of Karachi, where a local charitable organization cleared the shipment through customs and trucked the container to the affected area and the goods were distributed to locals. We wished we could have shipped much more but we simply did not have the means to do so. Fortunately in the midst of the disaster, Focus Humanitarian Assistance (FOCUS), an agency affiliated with the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) responded by mobilizing specialized staff, volunteers and resources. FOCUS conducted search and rescue operations and distributed essential relief items to tens of thousands of families in the affected areas of Islamabad, Muzzafarabad and other remote regions of the country. As one of the few local emergency relief agencies with a dedicated search and rescue team, FOCUS collaborated with various other international rescue teams including those from RAPID-UK and Russia, to engage in search and rescue operations. To assist in the operations, FOCUS was able to bring in four AKDN helicopters which made numerous trips into the affected area, carrying relief items including staple foods such as oil, lentils and rice, as well as tents, blankets and medical supplies which were distributed to thousands in need. On their return journeys to Islamabad, the helicopters carried survivors requiring urgent medical assistance. Other agencies of the Aga Khan Development Network, including the Aga Khan Health Services and the Aga Khan University Hospital, provided teams of doctors to provide emergency medical assistance to survivors.