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ICSC GIVES $1 MILLION TO AID TSUNAMI VICTIMS

The International Council of Shopping Centers is donating $1 million towards relief efforts for victims afflicted by the Dec. 26 Indian Ocean tsunami, and is inviting members to send in additional funds.

“This New Year would have been no different than any other, except that the world experienced one of the most horrific disasters ever with the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in South Asia and East Africa,” observed ICSC’s chairman James E. Maurin, CSM, in a letter to members informing them of the donation. “In times like these, we must come together and help our fellow man.”

ICSC’s donation will go to three organizations — the International Committee of the Red Cross; Médicins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and Oxfam International.

Funds will come from registration fees for April’s Retail Real Estate World Summit in Istanbul, Turkey. A major theme of the Summit is how shopping centers raise people’s quality of life by, for instance, lowering the cost of essential merchandise in the countries in which they are developed. Dr. Bernard Kouchner, co-founder and former president of Médecins Sans Frontières is scheduled to speak at the conference — an invitation that was extended well before the catastrophe.

ICSC has also established a Web site — http://tsunamirelief.icsc.org — to enable shopping center professionals throughout the world to make a donation.

“We are encouraging our 50,000 worldwide members to contribute what they can collectively or individually to this effort,” said Michael P. Kercheval, ICSC’s president and CEO.

Those wishing to make such donations are invited to make their checks payable to: ICSC Educational Foundation, 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, attention: Shopping Center Industry Tsunami Relief Effort.

“As passionate and busy as we find ourselves in our work,” Maurin continued, “every once in a while it is important to stop and take note of all our good fortune; not just our professional successes, but also the roof over our heads, the food on the table, and clean drinking water, things that the people of the disaster-stricken regional lost in the blink of an eye.”