I tend to keep my blog here in the realm of personal finance, but I think in doing so I focus more on the finance and less on the personal. So today I’m throwing out this extra post about something that is very near and dear to my heart – the Philippines.

I’m not one of those people that post a lot for charities or even beg for money that often to run, walk, swim, crawl, etc. for some sort of awareness… I think the last and only time I did was a cancer Swim-a-thon in 2010 and my awesome fund raising efforts brought in like $90. None the less, I felt like now was the time to comment on the situation in the Philippines.

Even if you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about the typhoon that killed more than 10,000 people in the Philippines and destroyed a huge area of land there. I mean, I usually do live under a rock in relation to world events and such but this event absolutely blew up my Facebook. Probably because about 25% of my friends on there are Filipinos.

I’ve probably mentioned in the past that I spent several years at sea working for a cruise line. Out on the ship, my entire stage crew and half of my technicians were always Filipinos. The carpenters, plumbers, electricians and even some of the engineers were all Filipinos too. And when you live all stacked on top of each other on ship for months on end without seeing anyone but each other, they become your family, ESPECIALLY my stage crew and techs.

So, with that in mind, I hope you’ll forgive my plea here, but I’m posting a link to the Philippines Red Cross and linking to a fellow cruise ship worker’s website that has several other charities that are focusing on helping the survivors of Typhoon Yolanda. And when they say every bit helps, they’re really not kidding – the amount of help you can provide in the Philippines with just $10 is staggering. Some of my stage crew made like $30 a day working at sea and they were providing for their entire families back home with no problem on that amount. So imagine what a $100 could do.

I know tragedies happen every day and clearly we can’t help people everywhere, so I get it if this just isn’t possible for you, but if you were looking for a Thanksgiving project or had a little spare cash, I personally know quite a few people who are suffering from the effects of this tragedy and I know they would appreciate the help.

I’m going to leave a link up on my sidebar for the next few months, because even after the press moves on and the next natural storm takes out part of a country that someone else is very attached to, the people in the Philippines will still be rebuilding. I don’t get a single penny related to you clicking through and checking out the link there – it’s just posted out of the goodness of my horrified, saddened and determined heart.