Most of the more than 5,000 families displaced by Mt. Kelud have returned to their homes, and the government has provided them with cleaning and roofing materials. However, manpower and knowhow have been in short supply.
Enter 45 ChildFund volunteers from Boyolali, in Central Java, 30 adults and 15 youth, who helped families clean their houses and fix their roofs, finishing six or seven houses each day. Three midwives travelled with the group to provide basic health care as needed for both families and the volunteers.
ChildFund youth volunteers bring in roofing materials to repair homes near the Mt.Kelud volcano.
A midwife makes sure volunteers remain healthy during their work.
Each day, ChildFund’s volunteers helped fix six or seven homes!
Driving in the car from Ormoc to Tacloban I see destruction.
Three months after Super Typhoon Haiyan devastated parts of the Philippines, debris and damage remain. Homes, schools and much of the infrastructure are still in a state of disrepair – this I had seen before but what I couldn’t look away from were the coconut trees, or more correctly, the destroyed fields where coconut forests were.
Coconuts are a very important part of the Filipino economy. The Philippines are the world’s largest exporter of coconuts with 25 million Filipinos directly and indirectly dependent on the industry.
But for small-scale coconut farmers in Ormoc and Tacloban it will be another three to five years before new trees will be ready to bear fruit again.
I was deployed to the Philippines as part of ChildFund’s emergency response team with colleagues from America, Guatemala, Senegal, Japan and Australia. Together we worked alongside our Filipino colleagues and more than 140 volunteers!
