For six hours Tuesday night, NewsChannel 11 hosted a telethon to raise money for tsunami victims. 'From Lubbock With Love', is a city wide effort spearheaded by United Supermarkets and American State Bank and so far the generosity of the people on the South Plains brought the total raised to just under a half a million dollars.

$136,00 of that total was pledged during Tuesday night's telethon. NewsChannel 11's Ashley Rodriquez takes you behind the scenes.

"I'm Karin McKay along with Abner Euresti we are here along with people from across the South Plains as part of an effort to raise money to help the tsunami victims shattered by disaster after the worst earthquake in 40 years." And with that, the phones were ringing. Volunteers from United, our Sri Lankan community and others showed up to help in any way they could.

 

'From Lubbock With Love' Relief Effort Details   Lubbockonline.com is providing a section to detailing area activity that is going on to support this effort.

 

"I still have family who live there and some of them have been affected by the disaster and to know the money collected here can go along way over there," Sanjaya Senadheera a phone bank volunteer said.

"It's just such a horrific event and it's something you can do in person rather than just send a check," Diane Peeples a phone bank volunteer said.

"I think we are fortunate to live in Lubbock Texas and have the wonderful life that we do. Because when we see on television, as we do here, what is going on on the other side of the world and the fact that we can help, we just thought we wanted to be apart of that," NewsChannel 11's Abner Euresti said.

And it takes so little to help, one dollar means 25 servings from Breedlove, so every dollar truly helps.

"When you see little kids come up to the station and want to give us a hug and a can of change it just shows you that's why we're doing this is for families and it's important to share with other people no matter how far away they are," NewsChannel 11's Karin McKay said.

All of the money raised will go to the local Salvation Army, Red Cross and Breedlove Dehydrated Foods, then distributed to people affected by the tsunami.

The From Lubbock With Love effort continues through Valentines day, the goal is $1million.

 

From Lubbock With Love Tsunami Campaign   Learn more about this million dollar effort to help the tsunami victims in Asia.