Email
PrintRebuilding for a better future
It’s been almost three years since a massive tsunami devastated coastal communities across the Indian Ocean. Three-quarters of the way through Oxfam’s response, we look at how Oxfam has been helping to rebuild shattered lives.
Ponnomma and her two daughters, Letcha, 17 and Nishanthini, 13, at their new house which Oxfam Australia and local partner Affected Women's Forum are building in Navatkadu village, Sri Lanka. Photo: Jim Holmes/Oxfam.
It was always going to be a mammoth exercise — helping to rebuild the lives of millions of people who were left devastated by the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. In all, more than 242,000 people died, 350,000 homes were destroyed and millions of livelihoods wiped out.
Three years on, Oxfam affiliates and partner organisations are estimated to have assisted more than two million tsunami-affected people in seven countries — Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Burma, Somalia and the Maldives.
We said from the outset that it would take time to help rebuild shattered lives, livelihoods and communities, and that has been the case.
In the weeks and months immediately after the disaster, our priority was to save lives by providing food, household items, clean water, sanitation, hygiene education and shelter and restoring assets such as roads, bridges and farming land. As the response has evolved, the focus has shifted towards working with communities to find longer-term solutions to their problems, establishing sustainable livelihoods and better preparing communities for future emergencies.
Our work has gone beyond merely restoring things to how they were before the tsunami, replacing what was lost, and rebuilding what was damaged. We are trying to ensure our projects in tsunami-affected communities are equitable and don’t fuel tensions or exacerbate relative poverty. This approach means ensuring that poor and marginalised people who might not have suffered damage in the tsunami, but experience ongoing daily hardship, are included in our work.
In Sri Lanka, we have built 2,215 transitional and permanent shelters for families who lost their homes in the tsunami, with another 200 permanent homes currently under construction. We are also building low-cost houses for 490 poor families living in tsunami-affected areas who didn’t lose their homes in the tsunami, but live in sub-standard conditions. Many of the families receiving these low-cost houses are already benefiting from Oxfam livelihood loans. It is part of our rights-based approach to ensure that all people in tsunami-affected communities have equal access to housing, regardless of whether or not the tsunami destroyed their homes.
Ponnomma, a 54-year-old widow and mother of eight, from Navatkadu village, in Ampara district, has spent her life living in cramped and flimsy shacks. In January next year, she and her family will move into their new cement brick house which is being built by local partner organization Affected Women’s Forum (AWF).
Oxfam and AWF are building five such houses in the village and put in place a rigorous consultation and selection process to ensure that the right people were being targeted for assistance. Once selected, the families were then consulted about the types of houses they wanted.
“I wanted a small kitchen, and I liked the direction the entrance was facing — it is auspicious to have it facing east,” Ponnomma explains.
“We never imagined we’d be able to move into such a house in our lifetime,” Ponnomma’s daughter Letcha, aged 17, says.
We have also encouraged greater involvement of women in livelihood activities through self-help groups, non-traditional skills and new ventures such as mushroom farming, fishing and cement brick-making. By targeting women, we aim to not only increase household incomes, but give them a stronger voice in their families and communities. In eastern Sri Lanka Muslim and Tamil communities which have long experienced tension are now working together in groups on livelihood projects, breaking down cultural and ethnic barriers.
In Aceh, in Indonesia, Oxfam’s tsunami response is winding down, as projects are completed and local non-government organisations take over. Four of Oxfam’s seven offices in Aceh have now closed, with the remaining offices now developing their own effective and responsible exit strategies in consultation with beneficiaries, partner organisations and local authorities.
Abduraman and his wife, Lumi Kassum, started this small but successful café in Kreung Itam village in Aceh Province, Indonesia. Oxfam helped them to build up the business which now supports their whole family. Photo: Jim Holmes/Oxfam.
Our work in Aceh has had a large public health focus — building new water supply systems, wells, toilets, washing facilities, distributing hygiene kits and conducting widespread hygiene education. In 2007 alone, we have dug more than 2,500 wells, built or desludged 1,241 septic tanks and installed water supply systems for 16 villages, including one in Lhokseumawe which will deliver clean water to almost 10,000 people. On top of this, we have also built 1,443 homes, 30 schools and helped 52,000 people with start or rebuild small businesses and other income-generating projects.
In India, Oxfam’s focus has been to provide poor and marginalised people in the fishing and agriculture sectors, especially women, and lower-caste and marginalised tribal groups, with alternate livelihood opportunities and market access. This has primarily been done by organising community members into self-help groups, and providing them with cash grants, loans and training to establish their own small loans and savings programs and establish links with banks.
The tsunami response has tested Oxfam — both in terms of systems and capacity to respond — as much as it has tested local partner organisations. Lack of access to areas of northern and eastern Sri Lanka due to renewed civil conflict has hampered our livelihoods and rebuilding programs. Many of the homes, livelihoods and community facilities that we helped rebuild in these areas after the tsunami have once again been destroyed. Families displaced by the tsunami in 2004 now find themselves displaced by conflict. We have been working to support these families with food, clean water, sanitation and hygiene education.
As well, local partner organisations in all countries have found it a challenge to scale up their programming, and Oxfam has had to work hard with them to ensure that adequate financial management and governance structures are in place to ensure accountability.
For example in India, some of the earlier livelihood grants and loans were delayed and some women who received loans did not always get the advice and support they needed to build truly sustainable income generating activities. As a result, we thoroughly reviewed our India tsunami program and assessed partners’ capacity and support needs. We have since changed how the project is managed and introduced stronger risk management structures and improved partner appraisal processes.
Another key lesson we have learned from the tsunami is that we need to work harder with communities on disaster risk reduction and step up our work with partners and local governments to be better prepared to respond to disasters — especially as the world faces an increasing frequency and scale of disasters as a result of climate change.
We have already started to address this — working with communities to establish rapid emergency response plans, rehabilitate coastal ecosystems and providing training to vulnerable communities, partner organisations and government authorities to improve infrastructure and disaster response mechanisms.
So far, 85% of the total funds received into the Oxfam International Tsunami Fund have been spent with all remaining funds to be spent or transferred to the implementing Oxfam affiliates by December 2008. We currently estimate that only 6% of money raised will be needed for administration and fundraising costs, well below our promised level of 10%, leaving more funds to be spent on programs.
While Oxfam’s four year post-tsunami program is nearing an end, our aim is to ensure that the effects of our work with affected communities last for many decades to come.
Story compiled from the Oxfam International Tsunami Fund third-year report and other Oxfam reports.