CEDAR’s staff Serena and the women in Kashmir.
“Thank you so much for coming… for your help and for your support in this time of need. These materials will really help us a lot in the coming days, but more than materials, thank you for coming and visiting us and spending time with us. That itself is a source of comfort for us…” said Zainab expressing her joy.
Continue reading May God Bless the Flood-Affected Family in Northern India
[Press Release]
Torrential rains have caused massive devastation and severe distress in India, particularly in the states of Jammu and Kashmir. It’s the worst flood in the last 106 years and has affected nearly 5 million people over 15 districts of the state. 3,000 villages and several towns were submerged. Hundreds of people are reported to have died, while thousands are missing. The Prime Minister of India declared it as a “national calamity”.
Continue reading CEDAR’s Relief Response to Severe Flood in Northern India
[ ‘SHARE’ Sept-Oct 2014 ] STEP INTO THE WORLD
About 1.8 million people in Delhi live in slums. Most of them used to live in villages and rural areas and migrated to the metropolis seeking for a better life. Yet, the slums are overcrowded, unhygienic and lack basic amenities. Most dwellers cannot find regular work as they do not an official identification. These realities shatter their “sweet home” dreams.
Continue reading Give Delhi Slum Dwellers the Hope of a Decent Home
[ ‘SHARE’ Mar-Apr 2014 ] FOCUS ~ MINISTRY
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.
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.
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.
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
[ePrayer – Pray for the Rural Community Development in India]
Partner EFICOR, in partnership with SCOPE, launched community development projects aiming at sustainable livelihood and capacity building in villages in Orissa, India, where most of the villagers are illiterate, lack of new agricultural skills, and face difficulty in transportation. CEDAR has supported this programme since 2008.
Thanks to our God that through the work of our partner EFICOR in India, there are 43 adults in the project’s villages who can now read and write simple Oriya alphabets & important words. Many of them now understand the importance of education and are willing to arrange their children to schools. In the past, the poor farmers got to work far from home after the harvest season. But now, they take the initiative to form groups in applying jobs under the government scheme. So as a result, the seasonal migration has decreased by 20%. In addition, thanks God that staff of SCOPE are now capable to manage on financial management & documentation independently after training.
Pray for the Rural Community Development Projects in India:
Other Methods of Payment
Download Donation Form
Please send a completed Donation Form, enclosing with cheque or pay-in slip, to CEDAR FUND, G.P.O. BOX 3212, HONG KONG.
[1] CEDAR is an approved charitable institutions and trusts of a public character under section 88 of the Inland Revenue Ordinance. Please click Inland Revenue Department website to check for details.
[2] Donations over $100 are tax deductible in Hong Kong with our receipts.
[3] Please DO NOT fax any donation information.
On 12 October, the Cyclone Phailin hit 18 districts of Orissa. The cyclonic swept 18,374 villages and damaged about 420,000 houses. Ganjam was reported to be the worst affected among the districts.
CEDAR’s partner EFICOR sent relief team to Ganjam on 13 October and did preliminary need assessment and has been providing relief to 2,500 severely affected families with food and non-food items, such as tarpaulin, clothes, blankets, mosquito net, sleeping mat, hygiene kits and water purification tablets, etc.
Phailin victims waiting to receive EFICOR’s relief provision
Mr. Hari Krushna Sadangi’s family consists of five members. Aftermath of cyclone he was in desperate situation to meet the basic need of his family and approached various people to get food to survive. The timely relief provision from EFICOR brought a smile in their faces and he confidently expressed that the whole family can survive for a period of one month without any worry now. ‘We as family will never forget the helping hand of EFICOR in our helpless situation.’
Mr. Hari Krushna Sadangi and his family
Due to the extensive scale of disaster there is an acute need to cover a larger population. EFICOR is considering scaling up its response to 5,000 families. CEDAR has granted HK$78,000 to support the Cyclone relief. Please continue to remember the needs of the affected families.
Pray for the Cyclone relief and the victims:
Relief Donation
(Please mark “India Cyclone Relief”)
[1] CEDAR is an approved charitable institutions and trusts of a public character under section 88 of the Inland Revenue Ordinance. Please click Inland Revenue Department website to check for details.
[2] Donations over $100 are tax deductible in Hong Kong with our receipts.
[3] Please DO NOT fax any donation information.
Contact Method
Tel>23819627
Fax>23922777
Email>sharing@cedarfund.org
Add>G.P.O. Box 3212Hong Kong
CEDAR’s Relief and Rehabilitation Work in Past: http://eng.cedarfund.org/relief/
CEDAR Approach on Relief and Rehabilitation: http://eng.cedarfund.org/relief-approach/
CEDAR and other member agencies of Integral Alliance work together to support the Cyclone relief implemented by EFICOR in Orissa, India.
