When Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar just over a year ago on May 2, Naomi Kato was in Japan, wishing she wasn't. As life ended for some 140,000 people and changed drastically for countless others, the Yokohama native found herself on the brink of a far-less tumultuous change, in between jobs and about to join the relief and development organization World Vision, one of the few groups immediately allowed in to Myanmar to help.
Ten days later, Kato's frustration was heightened when Sichuan, China , was rocked by an earthquake that claimed the lives of 68,000 people.
The now-34-year-old Kato was aching to help in whatever way she could. "I had expected to have joined World Vision in May," she explains, "but unfinished work delayed things and there I was, itching to go, thinking 'if only I had started already,' and thinking of all the work that needed to be done."