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| T. Vinol Desilva, right, and his wife, Nadeeka Tharanganie, and children Nisala Dhanuka (standing) and Poornivamasha in front of their new Habitat home in Sri Lanka. |
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One year after the disaster, the tide is turning.
by Kathryn Reid
In the year since the Dec. 26 tsunami pounded the Indian Ocean coastlines of India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, Habitat for Humanity launched a massive disaster response. Steve Weir, Habitat's vice president for Asia and the Pacific, says the organization will have provided direct housing assistance to about 10,000 tsunami-affected families by the end of the first quarter of 2006, and will serve 35,000 families before the project is completed. However, the response plan looks very different from the way it was originally conceived.
"Our first plan was to provide as many housing kits and core houses as quickly as possible to get people out of tents and barracks where they were often living under miserable conditions," said Weir.
Housing kits were used in East Timor following its independence and consist of a permanent structure and roofing with temporary walls. These can be quickly distributed and assembled. Core houses are the mainstay of "Save and Build," HFH's housing microfinance program in which families contribute to a savings group and help each other build small, first-stage "starter" houses-basically one room with a verandah.
Later, in a second stage of construction, the houses are plastered and painted and the verandah is enclosed. This incremental method of furnishing housing seemed like an ideal way to provide permanent shelter quickly for tsunami survivors in Thailand, India and Sri Lanka. However, government housing specifications and small relief groups, each offering a few very large homes, have ruled out both of these solutions for most situations.
In Indonesia, the initial idea was to assemble houses using metal frames, plywood panels and metal roofs. "The test build went well, and the local laborers we hired did a good job of producing 100 houses, but ultimately framed houses were not the solution the community was seeking," said Leonilo (Tots) Escalada, tsunami-recovery project director for Indonesia. People much preferred their conventional brick house.
Through this year of learning and innovation, Habitat has established systems and strategies that are getting more tsunami-affected families into safe and decent homes:
- Staff members were mobilized to provide expertise in building technology, project management and community relations.
- Short-term volunteers supplement the local construction crew; long-term volunteers--architects, engineers and others--bring specialized skills.
- Community organizers build relationships with village councils, local leaders and home partners. Project leaders work closely with government and other non-governmental agencies.
- Habitat's construction helps rebuild communities and lives through partnerships with donors and other non-governmental organizations that support new jobs, schools, water and sanitation systems and other services.
- Materials, equipment and facilities--also labor--are sourced locally as much as possible. Through Habitat's tsunami-recovery technical centers located at warehouses or even on the building site, critical materials are fabricated and laborers and construction supervisors receive training.
In India, Habitat has established a disaster-response center in Chennai, the state capital of Tamil Nadu. Its initial recovery activity was repairs and renovations; construction of new houses had to await the announcement of new government policies on housing in the tsunami-affected area, which was made in April. More than 1,000 families have been helped.
As the populated area closest to the earthquake and resultant tsunami, Indonesia suffered the greatest loss of life and property. Aceh province on the western end of Sumatra sustained the worst of the blow.
Habitat's tsunami-recovery team in Indonesia plans to complete half of its projected 10,000 houses by the end of February.
Habitat was one of the first international nongovernmental organizations to be recognized by Indonesia's central government authority overseeing the reconstruction and rehab of Aceh province. As the result of a recent evaluation of Habitat's new construction, the government has approved funding for Habitat to do repairs and renovations in Sigli and Banda Aceh.
In Sri Lanka, Habitat's early post-tsunami building was concentrated in the service areas of existing affiliates in Galle, on the southwest coast, and Batticaloa, on the east coast. The effort was managed by the affiliates and included teams of volunteers.
These replacement houses were 250-square-foot core houses, unplastered, unpainted and without toilets. The government has since mandated that tsunami-recovery housing be a minimum of 300 square feet and complete in every way.
New staff are now in place at the national and local levels in order to scale-up house production. The central office for the tsunami-recovery project is in the capital city, Colombo.
Batticaloa is in a conflict area where the Tamil insurgent group, LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and splinter groups are active and there is a large military presence. The situation is monitored out of concern for volunteers.
The tsunami-recovery project in Thailand is headquartered in Khao Lak to serve coastal communities both north and south of there. The office has high visibility, and Habitat has a strong presence among the non-governmental organizations and others involved in the rebuilding effort.
Partnerships and cooperative ventures have created a climate in which we are forging more opportunities to provide technical assistance and expertise to building projects already underway.
--Kathryn Reid is a Habitat writer based in Bangkok, Thailand.
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