Some people remain reluctant to donate aid money to Burma following the devastation wreaked by Cyclone Nargis, fearing it will be pocketed by the generals. But Caritas Australia, the Catholic aid agency, is achieving impressive things on the ground, funnelling funds directly to its networks deep in the heart of the country.
Working this way, Caritas estimates it will have distributed food, household living items, shelter and medical care to 60,000 people in the hardest hit regions within the next few weeks. Three hundred local volunteers have been trained to provide practical help. Refuge has been offered in parish centres and food distributed from them.
Many more than two million are suffering. The assistance being provided is not enough, but it is something.
Like the heads of other major aid agencies, Caritas Australia's CEO, Jack de Groot, is relieved that the generals have finally relented and allowed the agencies to go in. But despite this, he is not optimistic.
While international humanitarian agencies have been operating in Burma for many years, in the lead-up to the farcical constitutional referendum this month, the generals were squeezing these agencies out. This was despite the fact they provided food relief to malnourished people and helped control HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
The regime certainly didn't want the international attention it has now attracted as a result of the cyclone.
There is a lot the agencies can do. But Mr de Groot now fears that permission to enter will be a token gesture and that after an inappropriately short period, the agencies will be kicked out again. This despite the reality that Burma now needs long-term help to recover from the disaster.
The World Food Program (WFP) reported, even before Cyclone Nargis, that malnutrition of children under five was at 32 per cent and that there were at least five million people in Burma who were short of food.
And before the cyclone, the Thai Burma Border Consortium (TBBC) was $7 million short of funds to feed existing refugees — 254,000 people massing at the Thai Border, and in other places.
'We fear that due to the destruction by salt water of the delta lands — the rice bowl of Burma — thousands upon thousands of people will starve,' says Mr de Groot.
'Already, we are hearing stories from farmers who are frightened that their families, having survived the cyclone, will now die of starvation.