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| CEO Jonathan Reckford discusses housing issues with Jose "Lito" Atienza, Mayor of Manila, during a trip to survey tsunami damage last fall. So far, Habitat has provided assistance to 6,000 families in the tsunami-affected area. |
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By Jonathan Reckford
Last fall, I visited a community of Morgan sea gypsies in the village of Tachatchai in Phuket, Thailand, an area heavily damaged by the deadly tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004. Although saddened by the villagers' stories of loss from the terrible waves that destroyed lives and livelihoods, my visit was nevertheless marked by hopefulness.
Thanks to the work of Habitat for Humanity, our corporate partners, countless volunteers and especially the community itself, I was privileged and honored to dedicate five new Habitat houses during my visit.This group of families came together after the tsunami to rebuild what was lost.
I was especially touched by the story of Somwang Chiochan, a slight, 40-year-old who is developmentally challenged. He owns a tiny, two-square-meter plot of land near the edge of the water. Before the tsunami, he lived on that plot of land in a building not much bigger than a dog house. Although he was lucky enough to survive the waves, his small home was washed away. The community wanted his new home to be bigger, despite the size of his lot, so they built up. He now owns the only three-story, twosquare- meter house in Tachatchai.They call it the watchtower, and his job, he said, is to watch the sea for another tsunami.
As I was welcomed into the village and greeted with a beautiful Thai flower necklace, the community liaison officer told me that Habitat for Humanity not only helped provide the physical housing, but it also provided a communal strength through the building process. Strong houses, to be sure--and a far more robust sense of what it is to be a community.
"We are all so thankful," he said, "not necessarily to have new houses, but more so that we can come together with love as a community to rebuild our lives together."
This is the same spirit that infuses the work taking place in Northern Ireland, as Shawn Reeves reports elsewhere in this issue, and underscores the importance of our dedication not just to building houses but also to building the hope that the houses exemplify.
As we begin our 30th year, Habitat for Humanity, in cooperation with others of a like mind, has a heretofore unprecedented opportunity to expand that hope, to put shelter on the hearts and minds of people in such a powerful way that poverty housing and homelessness become socially, politically and religiously unacceptable, and, in so doing, to send our message to the farthest corners of the globe.
Much has been made in the press and on television about "disaster fatigue" in the wake of the tsunami, the multiple hurricanes, flooding and mudslides in Central America and the massive earthquake in Pakistan. If there is some of that, there certainly is another side to the story.
There is no question that we can, at times, feel overwhelmed by the task before us. But the destructive events of the past 15 months have so underscored the vulnerability of those living in poverty that there is a demand like never before to do what is necessary to end it.
A variety of non-governmental organizations and charities have seemingly come to the same conclusion at once: that we--as did the villagers in Tachatchai--can come together as one community to rebuild the lives that poverty has so stricken, so compromised. The board of directors of Habitat for Humanity International voted to enlist this organization in the ONE Campaign in June 2005. A variety of individuals across this country and around the world also came to the same conclusion, and the campaign now numbers two million members.
We are not fatigued.We are more driven and energized, for God has lighted our path and extended our mission faster and further than we ever dreamed possible.We have neither time nor patience for fatigue.
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