Taking Precaution

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[ ‘SHARE’ Mar-Apr 2014 ] FOCUS ~ MINISTRY

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Compiled and written by> Jojo Poon

Kalapara lies in the southernmost part of Bangladesh, where each rainy season causes great concern to its inhabitants. Memories of past typhoons and floods bring fear: lives, crops and houses may not survive the coming ones.

‘Our villagers are mostly illiterate and have no knowledge of disaster prevention, so any natural hazard would result in heavy casualties and property loss.’ High-school girl Mitu told CEDAR’s partner World Concern Bangladesh about her village. Last May the whole village was anxious about surviving the coming storms but the fight against the latest level-10 cyclone rewrote the villagers’ fatalistic attitude to facing disasters.

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From help-less to self-help

It was a frightening event when cyclone Mahasen directly hit Kalapara with winds of 90 km/h, flattening houses along the coast. Yet after the cyclone, residents were nonetheless thankful, and the community volunteers felt greatly encouraged. The disaster prevention and mitigation measures learnt from World Concern Bangladesh over the past three years have come into good use.

When the Bangladesh Meteorological Department forecasted that the tropical cyclone along Bangladesh’s southeast coastline had intensified to a hurricane-strength storm and was heading towards the southern coastal regions of Bangladesh, World Concern Bangladesh immediately contacted the area’s Community based Disaster Management Committees (CDMCs), launched emergency responses including issuing flag-warning and broadcasting, and summoned volunteer rescue and first aid teams, as well as preparing several shelters to be used.

‘One single flag hoisted by the village volunteer signifies that a natural disaster is coming, two flags warn people to look for a safe shelter nearby, and the highest warning of three flags means people should hide their possessions and dry foods under the floorboards and then hurry to a safe place immediately to save their lives.’ Mitu is one of those who learned this flag-warning mechanism and this helps illiterate villagers to identify different levels of disaster and respond accordingly.

Before Mahasen hit, the CDMCs managed to evacuate 4,000 villagers in time and no life was lost. This experience made the Kalapara residents see how they do not have to be helpless and resign themselves in face of a disaster – casualties can be prevented through communication, organisation and collaboration.

From disaster relief to disaster prevention

India faces as many disasters as Bangladesh. In July 2004, India’s Bihar State had the worst flooding in 50 years, affecting nearly 10,000 villages and 21 million people. Years of flooding have made Bihar State one of the poorest provinces in India.

CEDAR’s partner EFICOR has over 40 years of disaster relief experience and knows well that many rural communities of Bihar State have for a long time suffered in the vicious circle between disaster and poverty. EFICOR realises from experience that mere provision of disaster relief cannot deliver the affected communities out of their dire straits.

Since 2003, EFICOR has tried to promote community-based disaster management, setting up CDMCs made up of 7-10 resident representatives. They then liaise with the local government to relay the villages’ disaster prevention needs as well as assist in planning the regional disaster prevention strategies. Further, young villagers are organised into five special teams of warning, rescue, first aid, shelter management and relief management. The communities’ disaster prevention and resistance ability is raised through training and regular drills.

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Residents of Bihar State at a rescue drill

Facing relentless disasters, the villagers no longer just look after themselves and are not passive victims anymore. Through disaster management and mitigation training, the villagers not only learn to effectively prevent and fight against disasters, they also learn to work with each other and consider other people’s needs. ‘Instead of each person thinking about his/her own needs, the villagers now think about how the community as a whole might benefit. For instance, instead of installing hand-pumps in front of every door-step, villagers now consider installing the hand-pumps in strategic locations realizing that this would help more people during the floods.’ An EFICOR worker says.

From sighing to collective planning

Since 2009, CEDAR has directly started disaster mitigation and management programmes in China’s Yunnan, Hubei and Sichuan etc., giving disaster prevention training to the local communities, churches and schools. Villagers there who had witnessed many disasters often told us, ‘There is not a year without a disaster.’ This shows how they strongly believed that they could not resist disasters coming their way.

Disaster mitigation training aims to break this age-old thinking. During the training the people will usually find possibilities and resources within their own community and assess their potential disaster resistance ability; at the same time they review recent disasters and plot the months and types of frequent occurrences thereby working out feasible disaster prevention strategies.

A Yunnan pastor who attended the training told us, ‘In the workshop we found out that fire hazards were the most frequent in our community and happened a lot at a certain time. So during the dry season we have voluntary rangers watching out for forest fires. Further, since some villagers can only speak local dialects, special volunteers are appointed who would listen to the radio broadcasts during the rainy season and then give early warning of flooding.’

Disasters may be relentless but there is a bond amongst people. We are emotionally touched when we learn of disasters far or near and are often ready to help with relief. But prevention is better than cure, so let us walk with potential victims by taking the earlier step of disaster prevention and mitigation.

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Joy at receiving aid, but the fight does not end here.

Related information

Hazard is something natural or manmade that can cause danger, loss or casualty, such as earthquake, flooding, storm, epidemic, war and economic crisis. A hazard itself does not form a disaster; a disaster is caused when hazard is coupled with environmental vulnerability.

Vulnerability is the inability of people to forecast or resist hazards and recover from them due to potential factors which can be economical (unstable livelihood / lack of credit facility), natural (deficiency in natural resources), constructional (flaws in construction designs / building on unstable slopes), personal (illiteracy / marginalised groups / chronic illnesses) and social (social unrest / bad leadership).

Disaster management includes a series of interrelated disaster risk reduction programs: disaster prevention and resistance, post-disaster rescue and recovery, and disaster mitigation. Disaster mitigation composes of long-term actions taken to reduce immediate and potential hazards and vulnerabilities so as to mitigate the impacts of disasters upon the community and the environment; actions include promoting disaster resistance education, improving social and environmental planning and advocating disaster resistance strategies.

This issue

 

Support CEDAR’s Disaster Management and Mitigation Works

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A regular drill taken by post-disaster first aid volunteers

[ ‘SHARE’ Mar-Apr 2014 -Taking Precaution ] STEP INTO THE WORLD

 

CEDAR is currently carrying out disaster management and mitigation programmes through her partners in China, Bangladesh and India, helping residents of frequent disaster areas to increase their disaster prevention and resistance ability and to reduce potential threats. Programmes include:

  • Providing community representatives with skills enhancement on pre-disaster forecasts, disaster management, evacuation, post-disaster rescue and first aid;
  • Setting up volunteer teams for pre-disaster forecasts, evacuation, post-disaster rescue and first aid;
  • Setting up disaster management committees to assess the communities’ disaster vulnerability and resistance ability, and organise communities to take disaster prevention measures;
  • Sponsoring the improvement of communities’ disaster prevention facilities.

After attending a CEDAR’s disaster prevention training, a teacher from Sichuan says, ‘Apart from adding knowledge on disaster prevention and emergency evacuation, I have also learned how to relay disaster prevention information to my students in daily teaching.’ Now the school has regular evacuation drills, so should disaster come unexpectedly, teachers and students can respond calmly.

Please support CEDAR’s ‘Emergency Relief and Disaster Preparedness Fund’, enabling CEDAR and her global partners to promptly respond to disasters and help impoverished areas carrying out disaster prevention work.

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Villagers record time and frequencies of disasters to plan prevention.

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This issue

 

If It Is without You … | Sandy

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[ ‘SHARE’ Jan-Feb 2014 – Who Is Willing to Be Their Neighbour? ]　CEDAR’S BLOGGER

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Author> LAM Wai Shan Sandy, Education and Promotion Officer

I have been in poverty relief work for nearly ten years and during this time I not only got opportunities to see the world and broaden my horizon, but also met many ‘life mentors’.

If I had not met underprivileged families, I might not have known that sympathy is not necessarily what the poor want! They yearn more for affirmation and recognition, they long for chances that their dreams may come true, being able to give back to the society their contributions.

If I had not met frontline workers, I might not have believed in God’s grace being all over the world; He moves different people so that they will put aside preconceptions, step out of their comfort zones and go to faraway places to minister those isolated and unreached groups.

If I had not met the sincere and friendly ethnic minority peoples and villagers in rural China, I might not have realised that those who live not so prosperous being more eager and generous than the rich in sharing their possessions with others.  Non-material trove such as human dignity, values, temperaments and joy are priceless!

If I had not met Christians in Ethiopia, I might not have appreciated such a situation when daily life conflicts with the faith and our faith challenges our way of life; still our choice is to abide by our faith, despite difficulties we are able to live out the faith in boldness after the struggles!

If I had not met faithful volunteers, I might not have discovered that I am not working alone, and that volunteers are indispensable. They are willing and conscientious and I have learned much from them.

If I had not met generous givers, I might not have known that some give not because they have a lot in spare, but they give what they just have; some even lending hands, in order to help those in needs. Their acts of charity encourage me and show me the good and beautiful side of humanity.

If I had not been in a close-knit team of co-workers, I might not have understood that it is precious to work out the team spirit: working together in hands, having mutual support in prayers, putting to the greatest effect each member’s potential and growing together in works.

Because of you, I have become what I am today – being able to hold on to my faith and love others, just as Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, ‘Christ did not, like a moralist, love a theory of good, but He loved the real man.’

Labour Strike Resulting in Deaths in Cambodia

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[ePrayer – Pray for the labour strike in Cambodia]

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The Cambodia government recently announced to increase the minimum wage of garment industry to USD 95. However, this amount is way lower than the amount of USD 160 insisted by workers and thus sparked off the current labour strike. There are over 500 garment factories in Cambodia. About 300,000 garment workers go on strike, seriously affecting the local garment industry.

In the past, labour strikes usually ended peacefully in Cambodia. This time however, is in a very huge scale and seems to become more and more intense. Many factories go into a stall. Police is called to quiet the demonstrators using armed force, resulting in bloody conflicts leading to at least 4 dead.

The manufacturers of many multinational garment corporations are involved in this strike. According to the study of “Labour Behind the Label” and the news report of “The Independent” last September, these multinationals offer about a GBP50 monthly salary to their workers in Cambodia. One quarter of their workers however are found to be seriously malnutrition. It is reported that if a worker need to acquire energy of 3,000 Kcal per day as suggested by doctor, he/she will have to spend GBP47 monthly in food, which is almost their whole monthly salary!

Cambodia ended its civil war in 1997 and since then, many industries have embarked into recovery phase. Due to the huge labour force from the young adults, many foreign-invested enterprises came and set up factories in Cambodia. One third of them are from China. In recent years, the production cost in China is escalating quickly due to high salaries and complex labour benefits and welfare legal regulations. Investors in China have determined that it’s no longer cost effective to produce in China. Consequently many of them move to other countries with lower labour cost, such as Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar. [The Independent, BBC, HK Daily News, the House News]

Meditate on Scripture:

‘For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. …The workers who were hired first grumble against the landowner. “These who were hired last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.” But the landowner answered one of them, “I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?”’ Matthew 20:1-16

At that time, a denarius was the daily wage of a laborer, and was enough to buy one-day food supply for a household. In those days, the landowner considered what is the amount that a worker’s family would need to survive and paid him what we say today the ‘Family Wage’. It is indeed a challenge to balance the different benefits and wants from foreign investors, factory owners, government and labourers. However, as Christians, it is worth to reflect on such practical issue, which is under the globalized world today that is largely dominated by capitalism, how one can fairly allocate the profits and resources among different social stratum practising the teaching of Christian faith on justice and mercy.

Pray for the labour strike in Cambodia:

  • The Cambodian government will soon meet with GMAC to discuss about the minimum wage for the garment industry. Pray for good communications between the two parties and a consensus reached to all satisfaction;
  • Pray for an effective and secured platform/ channel for workers to express their opinions without facing any threats;
  • Pray for a fair wage to workers which can meet their daily needs.

Minorities Suffer Worse Health Outcomes

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[ePrayer – Pray for the health of minorities]

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Minority groups suffer worse health outcomes than the rest of the population, according to a new report published by Minority Rights Group International (MRG). They call for greater measures to combat disparities in global health outcomes between minority groups and majority communities. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have resulted in much that is good. But one of the fundamental flaws with them has been the lack of a right or equity perspective. Minority and indigenous communities often are marginalised from all aspects of life in their countries. For example, infant mortality among indigenous groups in China’s Yunnan Province was 7.8%, compared to 5.4% for non-indigenous groups in Yunnan and a national average of 2.6%. In Papua, Indonesia, HIV infection rates among minority groups are 15 times the national average. In Guatemala, indigenous children suffer approximately 20 percent higher malnutrition than majority communities. According to the report, lack of access to healthcare and systemic patterns of discrimination are major causal factors behind these figures. [IRIN]

Pray for the health of minorities:

  • Pray for sufficient and proper health care and assistance to the minorities;
  • Pray for an end on any kind of discrimination to minorities and indigenous groups.