ON behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) we thank your readers for their generous response to the Tsunami Earthquake Appeal.

More than £100 million has now been donated by the British public, with nearly £5 million from Yorkshire, and the total is rising every day.

Aid agencies are already bringing clean water, medicine, food and clothes to the survivors. But much remains to be done and we need more money.

The DEC asks people to keep donating online at www.dec.org.uk, by telephone on 0870 60 60 900, or at any high street bank or post office.

Members of the DEC are World Vision, Tearfund, Save The Children Fund, Oxfam, Merlin, Help The Aged, Concern, Christian Aid, CARE, CAFOD, British Red Cross and ActionAid.

Here are some examples of what your money will buy:

£15 provides a family with plastic sheeting, a water container and purification tablets

£35 feeds a family for a week

£100 buys enough zinc sheeting and timber to help rebuild two family homes.

This crisis has proved that British people care about others thousands of miles away. This year offers an unprecedented chance to tackle the injustice of a world in which survivors of a tsunami die from diarrhoea, cholera and malaria because they are poor.

Our hope for 2005 is that the generosity of ordinary people shown to the victims of the tsunami is the beginning of a real determination to do more to end the avoidable suffering which natural disasters, conflict and poverty inflict on so many people in poor countries.

Britain can take a lead internationally at the annual G8 gathering and as president of the European Union.

Earthquakes and tsunamis may be unavoidable. Poverty is not. See www.makepovertyhistory.org for more information.

Steve Chapman, Cafod regional manager,

Richard Buckley, Christian Aid area co-ordinator,

Jonathan Dorsett, Oxfam Northern campaigner,

Gill Thurgood, Tearfund regional manager,

c/o Oxfam Campaigns,

Park Square East, Leeds.

Updated: 10:34 Thursday, January 13, 2005