About five years ago a woman decided she wanted to help women in areas hit by the tsunami in Asia. Her project was to accept and transfer ownership of sewing machine where needed. The link below is to their website and gives much more information about the group and what they do. Considering that we all on the board love our machines, maybe it's possible that some of us can help out this organization in some way...even if you can't help now, it's good to know about the work being done.
http://www.thesewingmachineproject.org/