INDONESIA: Project Sungai Geringging Update – Week 6
Wow, what an amazing start to Project Sungai Geringging (still love saying that!). We opened our doors on 25 October 2009 and in the following weeks have had 65 volunteers, representing 13 countries spanning the globe from Indonesia to Canada to Ireland to Russia to Lebanon!
We are assisting survivors of the 7.9 earthquake which rocked Western Sumatra on 30 September, 2009, and was followed by a separate 7.0 earthquake the following day. The earthquake damaged over 200,000 homes and survivors now struggle to remove the ruins and erect shelter as the rainy season quickly approaches.
Decon 5 (deconstruction)
We started with it on Day 1 and we’re still busy with it – deconstruction of rural homes. During the earthquake homes shook violently and walls buckled, often leaving the roof intact. Although the affected population of Padang Pariaman is proactively working to reclaim their ruined homes, many are so severely damaged that it is beyond the community’s ability to deal with the unstable structure. So the homes sit as a haunting reminder, precariously waiting to fall. The HODR hard hat team analyzes the structure, creates a safe working environment, re-claims salvageable materials, then in a controlled fashion brings the roof to the ground. Once the overhead hazard has been eliminated, volunteers busily remove the corrugated metal (aka zinc/galvanized iron/GI), disassemble the wooden trusses, and separate usable brick/stone from mortar. To date we have assisted in the safe deconstruction of 21 homes and 1 elementary school.
Salvage
The driving force behind what we are doing is not only the elimination of unsafe structures but also the salvage of rebuilding materials. Doors, windows, ventilation block, wood, and zinc are all high value items in this area and everything we salvage translates directly to a cost saving when rebuilding. We have seen families utilizing their salvaged materials almost as quickly as we create it, turning the recycled pieces into temporary shelters and kitchens. The local household income for our area is equal to about US$70.00 per month, and our brick salvage efforts alone equates to about 2 months wages!
Infrastructure
As our numbers swell, we’ve been keeping one step ahead with the build-out of our base. Our house starts as a blank slate (a pretty spacious fantastic blank slate), and over the weeks we’ve brought in bunks, built shelves, erected large canvas tents to increase the sleeping space and common areas, and expanded our rainwater catchment system to supply our water. If you arrive at the project today, it should look like the familiar HODR setup that you’ve seen at our other projects around the world. Thanks to all the volunteers who have worked at the base, making it a more comfortable and efficient place from which to run our work in the field.
1st Time & Repeat Volunteers
One of the highest compliments to our organization is to have a volunteer repeat their service at another project. We are proud of our programs and the work our return volunteers enable us to do (38% of volunteers on this project). Project Sungai Geringging is breaking some new ground on our international front with a high percentage of 1st time volunteers (62% of volunteers on this project). It is an honor to have so many people willing to fly almost around the world to join us on their first HODR experience. Thank you!
School #9
Although, schools (particularly primary schools) suffered heavy damages in the earthquake, resources for temporary classrooms were quickly mobilized and many now sport rows of temporary timber/plywood classrooms – a more conducive learning environment than hot canvas tents! However these temporary classrooms are often built right next to a precariously damaged masonry school building. Our deconstruction team worked side by side with local volunteers to “safe” an elementary school in a neighboring korong (neighborhood). The work was complicated and the scale was much bigger than the single-family homes we have been working on. Nonetheless, we brought the huge trusses down and salvaged tin that was quickly used to construct new temporary classrooms. Now, a new 3-classroom school building is under construction on the very site we helped demolish and clear.
Teaching English
On many of our international projects we have the opportunity to help students learn and practice English. In this case a local high school teacher invited our volunteers to come to his classes and engage students in conversational English with his students. Now, 2 days a week our volunteers engage high school students in topics ranging from life at home to life on the go.
Distribution
Project Sungai Geringging has been helped by many people so far, one of them being Pak Andreas, an Indonesian businessman based in Jakarta. He continued his support in the form of a donation of hygiene, household, and food items to be distributed to our neighbors. Our volunteers unpacked, inventoried, sorted, and repackaged the goods in suitable portions and will distribute them with the help of local Posko (community-based information exchange) organizers. In all more than 500 beneficiary families will receive needed items!
Malalak Safari
HODR is always looking for opportunities to help communities in need and for ways to engage our volunteers in meaningful programs, often in partnership with other organizations. One week ago, we started working with IBU Foundation, an Indonesian NGO at work in Agam (the district just north of us) where they are building an IDP (internally-displaced persons) camp. These families lost their entire community in earthquake-induced landslides, and now they’re working with IBU to build shelters, water systems, and latrines in their new home.
So far our work with IBU Foundation has taken us to Sini Air camp. As a HODR satellite project, our volunteer team lives and works away from our main base. In this case, they’re living in the IDP camp in a remote area (more remote than Sungai Geringging!) with no infrastructure. In the first round of this project, we installed 10 rainwater catchment systems on the transitional shelters; this week we return to help construct 2 communal latrine blocks.
People & Place
Part of a HODR project is experiencing the community we live and work in. Sungai Geringging has been friendly and welcoming to the volunteers who have come here to help. “Hello Mister!” and cheerful motorbike horn beeps ring out wherever we pass. Volunteers have become an established presence at the local warungs (streetside food stands) and in the market. We were even invited to a local wedding party! Volunteers have also explored the area on their own, taking weekend trips to Bukittinggi, hiking up local volcano Gunung Merapi, and renting boats off the beach in Pariaman. Through these activities, we gain a better understanding of the people and the place of Padang Pariaman. (Ok fine, the trips to Bukittinggi might just result in appreciation for the Big Bucket at KFC.)
With two and a half months of Project Sungai Geringging left, there’s plenty of time to come and volunteer! Taking it one house at a time, we’ll continue our deconstruction/salvage work as well as expand the diversity of our programs with the community and NGOs, bringing Sungai Geringging closer to the path to recovery.
Marc Young
International Operations Director
Hands On Disaster Response
ITALY: L’Aquila Earthquake Assessment Final Update
We are happy to announce that HODR will not launch a project in response to the recent earthquake affecting L’Aquila and the Abruzzo region of Italy. It seems incongruous that we would say we are happy, but the the good news is: they are doing an amazing job of dealing with the needs created by this powerful earthquake.
I was joined by HODR executive director David Campbell and first-in volunteer Henri Fawcett for the post-earthquake assessment. As a team we visited the capital city of L’Aquila as well as 10 other cities, we attended numerous meetings, and had direct contact with 18 different representatives on the ground.
Protezion Civile is the national agency charged with providing service after a disaster and they were ubiquitous. The work they have done in conjunction with the firefighters and Italian volunteers is impressive. They have provided for the shelter, food, and safety of the survivors. They have established “no-go” perimeters for non-authorized peoples and safety zones around damaged/crumbling buildings. They have even shored up some buildings with the hopes of saving them. They have hundreds of hardhat-wearing inspectors combing through homes and buildings looking to clear or condemn them for habitation. We saw them escorting hardhat-wearing homeowners into their homes to allow them to gather some of their possessions. This level of assistance covers the ground zero area of L’Aquila to fringe cities minimally impacted like Sulmona. One of our guiding questions is “is the capacity to respond overwhelmed?” The answer hear is clearly no.
Volunteering is instilled in Italians from an early age and has been a part of their culture for generations. When we spoke the Protection Civil we were told they had 2500 volunteers waiting to help who would be cycled in in shifts to allow rest for those currently serving. The Caritas coordinator told us they had 1500 people waiting.
It is our belief that their strong ability to respond during this emergency phase will continue into the recovery and rehabilitation phase. We will continue to monitor the situation through our new Italian friends to see that this is indeed the case.
I want to thank all of the potential volunteers who contacted info@hodr.org and those of you who pledged to support our efforts financially. We had more than 100 people say they would join us if we decided to launch a project and willing donors. Thank you also to the people who contacted their friends, family, and colleagues on our behalf. We were able to move around Italy and conduct the assessment because of the help that these connections provided.
Please stay with us at www.hodr.org for further volunteer opportunities and the possibility make a direct donation to help natural disaster survivors around the world. As an alternative to Italy, you could join Project Mena in Arkansas!
See you at the next one,
Marc Young
International Operations Director
ITALY: L’Aquila Earthquake Assessment Update
We’ve been on the ground in Italy for four days (since Sunday, 19 April) assessing the L’Aquila 6.3 earthquake and the potential for a HODR volunteer response project. We’ve made considerable progress and contacts in the few long days we’ve been here, and we have met some challenges…
Agency Protection Civil (APC) is the Italian government agency with overall responsibility and control of the response. The affected areas have been blocked off, which makes it challenging for us to access the affected areas and move as freely as we’d like – even residents whose homes were damaged must be escorted by a firefighter to enter the disaster zone. APC has done an excellent job of providing emergency response of food, shelter, and damage assessment.
We met with Giovanni del Silbiero of APC, who was open and patient; however, we learned that nothing will be allowed without approval of APC and there seems no possibility of direct international volunteer participation without cooperation through a pre-approved Italian organization – Caritas and Red Cross are the largest.
In the past few days we’ve met with the Sulmona Lions Club, Bishop Angel Spina, and the Mayor of Rocco di Mezzo and today we’re meeting with Caritas. We have been welcomed warmly in these meetings, – the bishop had even printed out pages from our website! – but bottom line comes down to the need for APC approval, so we’re working on potential collaboration with Caritas or another organization.
In addition to L’Aquila, there is major damage in Rocco di Cambio, Onna, San Gregorio and Saint Angelo. The weather has been cold and rainy, creating an even more difficult situation for the many people still in tents either because their homes were destroyed, or because they are waiting for APC inspection of their homes to be cleared for safe use.
If you’re interested in volunteering if we launch a project in Italy, please email Tom at info@HODR.org with ‘Italy’ in the subject line. To support HODR’s response efforts please make a tax-deductible donation to our Disaster Response Fund today.
Follow our progress with real-time updates at twitter.com/HODRopsIN, view photos, and check back here for more information as it becomes available.
Thank you for supporting HODR!
HAITI: Assessment Update #1
HAITI: Assessment Announcement
CHINA: China Earthquake Assessment Conclusion
After an unprecedented six weeks on the ground, Marc, John, and I have decided to conclude our activities in Sichuan and announce no HODR deployment here in China.
Although we found communities with needs well-matched to HODR’s strengths and met many incredible generous, insightful, appreciative people, we are unable to operate with reasonable confidence of sustained government permission. As we noted several times in our assessment updates, NGOs are a nascent community in China, and the foundations for effective work are currently being established through the experiences of several domestic and international NGO pioneers in China. Additionally, the Chinese government has done an incredible job at responding to this event.
We have a commitment to provide a stable base and transparent operations to our volunteers, and we simply are not able to do that in China at this time. We looked at several options of modifying our model to allow us to support earthquake survivors in some capacity, but ultimately decided that we would be unable to meet our dual goals of providing tangible assistance to a community in need as well as the unique volunteer experience that makes HODR what it is.
For a more personal look at our experiences here in China, please visit the HODR blog. Marc, John, and I have all posted our perspectives on the assessment.
If you’re looking for a way to plug in with HODR, please consider joining Project Cedar Rapids, currently operating in Iowa, USA. We’ve extended the project until August 1, 2008 and your support is much appreciated!
And so, after 135 individual contacts, 52 organization/business contacts, 51 meetings, 26 government office visits, and 27 site assessments, we leave China. Until next time, zai jen!
Stefanie Chang
John Hancock
Marc Young
CHINA: Sichuan Earthquake Assessment Team
CHINA: Assessment Update #4
After 4 weeks in China, we are simultaneously:
1. Strengthening our relationship with our targeted project sites
2. Working towards securing permission to launch
The centralized bureaucracy and lack of a Chinese precedent for organizing NGOs, especially in a disaster context, adds to the challenge of this assessment.
Along with making connections with Chinese NGOs, we’ve also branched out our site assessments. John made the 10 hour trip to Bazhong, a cluster of rural villages built with mud brick construction on the very edge of Sichuan province. We’ve also followed reports on the situation in Gansu province from iboughtashelter.com, where they are now on the ground.
Operations director Marc Young will join me in Beijing this week for a round of higher level meetings, while John continues to pursue our connections in Chengdu. We’re planning a two-week push to try to move forward in both of our goals; thanks to our patient volunteers and supporters for your continued enthusiasm!
CHINA: Assessment Update #3
Due to the restrictive operating environment for foreign NGOs in China, we’ve shifted our strategy to finding a partner Chinese organization, with whom we can launch a response project open to both foreign and Chinese volunteers.
The past few days have been filled with meetings with various local and national Chinese NGOs and foundations. We present the work that HODR has done in other countries and how we can be effective in similar ways in Sichuan. The HODR model is very different from current NGO activities in China and so skepticism yields to curiosity, which turns into genuine interest in the opportunities we can create.
We plan to spend the next week establishing these partnerships. The operating environment in China is completely different from any country that we’ve worked in before, so these next steps are critical in determining whether a volunteer deployment is possible or not.
John Hancock
Project Coordinator
CHINA: Assessment Update #2
New assessment photos are now here!
On Sunday we joined iboughtashelter.com for their test build in Baiguocun, a village that has only a quarter of the tents it needs for its population of 2500 people. The fun, chaotic build was an amazing taste of what it’d be like to work in China. Men, women, and children pitched in, villagers showed up with all varieties of obscure and ancient tools which worked far better than our shiny new shovels and pickaxes, and we had as much of a workout from laughing as from erecting the durable, community-approved shelter!
We’ve narrowed down the list of villages that we’re interested in working in and are now trying to secure official permission to launch our volunteer base. While the lack of NGO infrastructure in China makes it challenging to receive such approval, we strongly believe that there are tangible, immediate ways that HODR volunteers can make an impact in the small villages affected by the quake.
John and I will split the rest of this week between scouting villages and obtaining permission to work in the area. We’re still optimistic that we can make a definitive project announcement by the end of this week. Thanks so much for your support; we’ll post again soon!
Stefanie Chang
Assessment Team Lead
CHINA: Assessment Update #1
It’s been a busy week here in Chengdu! Click here for a first look at the assessment, currently in progress.
Immediately upon arriving on Sunday, I met with reps from IFRC and Sichuan Quake Relief, a well-coordinated local expat relief effort. I’ve also made connections with a range of NGOs and local Chinese groups, all of whom have launched initial assessments in the affected areas.
Since Wednesday, I’ve been in the field visiting the areas around An Xian, Mianyang, and Mianzhu. In smaller villages with older construction, the devastation is complete – 90% to 95% of homes are collapsed or unlivable. John arrived on Thursday night and we’ve continued to assess and identify potential locations where HODR may be able to work. We’re amazed and touched by the gratitude and hospitality of the people we meet, who face such difficult circumstances yet always smile and shake our hands. Jodie, one of our invaluable local guides, said “In China, it is everyone’s dream just to have their own house. For so many people, now this is gone.”
The government is working hard to meet the shelter needs of people from the worst affected areas. A massive temporary housing operation is underway, with modular houses springing up in vast blocks in government-prepared lots. Local leaders have a strong understanding of the needs in their communities.
I feel confident that we’ll be able to reach a decision whether HODR can announce a volunteer project by the end of next week. Thank you for your interest and support; please continue to check back for updates!
Stefanie Chang
Assessment Team Lead
