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" 1. Chip in to support a charity that&amp;#039;s aiding Japan. &amp;quot;Trust us, even three months later, the people of Japan will still be recovering,&amp;quot; says firefighter Kelly Melton, 33, who joined a five-person volunteer rescue team and arrived in Japan to help a mere 72 hours after the quake.  &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re not sit-at-home-and-watch kind of people,&amp;quot; says Sil Knoblich, 34, an emergency medical technician who volunteered with Kelly and others from Empact Northwest, a disaster-response nonprofit in Seattle. Once in Tokyo, team member and nurse Tamara Alvarez, 33, met up with her brother (who&amp;#039;s lived there since he was a child) to arrange travel to the devastated regions. &amp;quot;Since we arrived so early, everyone was still trying to get a handle on the situation,&amp;quot; Kelly explains. So they offered to do anything they could. &amp;quot;I saw a woman clearing mounds of debris out of her storefront, so I found another shovel and got to work,&amp;quot; Sil says. Can&amp;#039;t get on a plane like this fearless team did? &amp;quot;It doesn&amp;#039;t matter \u2014 just pick up the phone, call a group in your area, and ask what you can do,&amp;quot; Kelly says. &amp;quot;The big-name charities are invaluable, but there are smaller organizations doing great stuff too. We needed a lot of help from back home, from coworkers who covered our shifts to friends who pitched in to pay for the plane tickets.&amp;quot; To donate to Empact, go to empactnorthwest.org, or search charitynavigator.org to find charities near you that are working in Japan. 2. Fund Japanese-based nonprofits through globalgiving.org, a site that highlights charities, particularly small-scale ones that lack the resources to fund-raise worldwide. Donations to Japan have lagged: In the first six days post-tsunami, Japan received $87 million, compared with $210 million sent to Haiti over the same period of time last year. &amp;quot;People think Japan doesn&amp;#039;t need their help because it&amp;#039;s a wealthy country,&amp;quot; says Global Giving&amp;#039;s president and cofounder, Mari Kuraishi, who is originally from Japan. &amp;quot;But they will be rebuilding \u2014 and will need our help \u2014 for years, so the projects we support are a mix of relief and reconstruction.&amp;quot; 3. Start a coin-collection initiative in your child&amp;#039;s classroom and encourage parents and students to donate spare change to Hands On Tokyo, a nonprofit in Japan that pairs volunteers with service projects in the devastated areas. For more info, visit generationon.org/parents and click on Project Ideas. 4. Text JAPAN to 20222 to donate $10 to Save the Children, a charity that&amp;#039;s been working in Japan for 25 years and has set up kid-friendly safe havens for some of the 74,000 children in evacuation centers. 5. Buy a Tory Burch &amp;quot;Japan Relief&amp;quot; T-shirt for $29 at toryburch.com through September 15 and 100 percent of the cost will go to the American Red Cross. Nan Buzard, a disaster management expert with the Red Cross, says, &amp;quot;There was a large elderly population living in some of the hardest-hit regions, and we&amp;#039;re here to help those of them who can&amp;#039;t relocate.&amp;quot; 6. Organize a clothing drive to collect unworn apparel for the international aid organization Kids in Distressed Situations (KIDS). It will distribute the items to Japanese children living in shelters. Get details at kidsdonations.org. 7. Download Songs for Japan, a compilation of 38 great tracks from Kings of Leon, Adele, Lady Antebellum, and more, on Amazon or iTunes for $9.99. All proceeds will benefit the Japanese Red Cross as they help their country get back on its feet. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/charity/tips/a11949/how-to-help-japan/>