DHAKA (UCAN) -- After a whole day of trudging through the debris of wrecked homes handing out relief coupons to survivors of the recent killer cyclone, the president of the Bangladesh Catholic Students' Movement (BCSM) was tired.

Speaking to UCA News by phone late on the night of Dec. 2, Anthony Prince Costa recounted that he had spent the entire day visiting families in the southern village of Ryanda. "People of the area are not getting enough relief supplies," he commented.

Costa, 24, is a volunteer for Caritas Bangladesh's relief aid to victims of Cyclone Sidr, which struck the southern coastal regions of Bangladesh on Nov. 15.

As of Dec. 2, the government was reporting 3,292 people confirmed dead and 52,808 others injured in the disaster. Altogether, more than 8 million people were severely affected.

According to Caritas executive director Benedict Alo D'Rozario, university student volunteers like Costa have joined 122 Caritas staff and more than 100 village leaders in trying to bring relief to the Barisal and Khulna areas. These areas are respectively 110 kilometers south and 130 kilometers southwest of Dhaka. Ryanda is in the Khulna area.

Costa, a mathematics honor student studying in Dhaka, is one of many who have been struggling through the debris assessing the victims' needs and handing out coupons with which they can to receive aid the following day.

About 30,000 families have received aid so far, D'Rozario said.

Costa explained his sense that it is not possible to escape the responsibility of helping the people. "If you do not come and see, you will never understand the suffering of the victims," he said, noting that they had no food or shelter. "One woman asked me to give her a plastic sheet so that she could protect her children from the night dew."

Debris made it difficult for him to move from one place to another. "Twice I almost fell while scrambling over fallen trees," he recalled, adding that "it will take six months for the locals to clean up" the mess.

He said that earlier in the day he met a man who gave heart-wrenching testimony after surviving the 7.5-meter waves the cyclone whipped up by hanging onto a tree.

Costa and 15 other young men from BCSM, aged 20-24, have been supporting Caritas in collecting donations and packing relief supplies, as well as distributing coupons to cyclone-affected families.

Costa said that they personally collected a total of 21,000 taka (US$310) in donations, about 13,800 of this coming from two parishes in Dhaka and the rest from the BCSM unit in Khulna.

"The money is so little," he admitted, adding that baby food is an urgent need. "We are thinking of doing something with the Khulna diocesan youth commission for the victims soon."

The National Council of YMCAs of Bangladesh (NCYB) is also distributing relief to 200 Christian families in the southern districts of Mongla and Gopalganj, southwest of Dhaka.

NCYB president Marcel A. Gomes told UCA News on Dec. 2 that the situation of the people there is very difficult as they are daily wage earners. "Now they are jobless, homeless and without food."

Gomes visited people in Mongla's coastal Chila area on Nov. 22.

"Their situation is not like ours, the people who live in cities and towns," he explained, noting the people's dependence on the sea for their livelihood, even at the risk of deadly storms and floods.

"If they don't go out to sea to fish, they starve," he said.

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