To the Editor: The article about human-powered equipment makes only a passing reference to Freeplay's distribution of radios to aid agencies working in remote places.

By contrast, funds from Western nations nominally earmarked for security and social service-related initiatives in Somalia mainly went directly to aid agencies, with very little of it ultimately reaching the Somali authorities.

George Soros's donation, thought to be the biggest private gift to a humanitarian cause, will go to aid agencies in the former Yugoslavia.

Their conditions are impossible to determine; the Sudanese government has denied access to aid agencies on security grounds.

They'd been there twenty years and had even nominated a "sheik" to make representations to aid agencies and the government.

Britain will give $2.9 million to help victims, with $1.4 million already allocated to aid agencies in Congo, said Clare Short, the international development secretary.

There was need for international assistance for war victims and the provision of humanitarian aid, in particular areas of the country inaccessible to aid agencies.

These MFD functions can aid agencies in improving network accessibility and help to reduce congestion by monitoring the number of vehicles in the network.

Actually, Cole wasn't proposing donations to aid agencies as the 'solution' to mass starvation any more than Stuart Weir and I were doing so a few years ago.

Each year all money raised is dispersed among more than three dozen nonprofit organizations aiding children, homeless and elderly people, families in crisis, and other agencies, mostly in Fairfield County.