[Dialogue] News From India

[Ann Shafer]

Jack, That is wonderful. Local people stepping up. I imaging there are
stories of heroism all over in the areas of the tsunami damage that have not
and may never get out. Thank you for helping to get this story out.

Colleagues, I am secretary to our local Habitat for Humanity affiliate.
Habitat for Humanity International has affiliates in some of the areas hit
and has a plan for aiding through construction of homes and needed community
sites, cost of $50 to $1600. Perhaps you would like to read their plan
below. You may give to Habitat on their web site or to a local affiliate in
your area designated for Tsunami victims or for Habitat in one of the
countries mentioned below.

TSUNAMI RESPONSE FACT SHEET
January 6, 2005

Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI) has an active presence in six of
the countries affected by the December 26th Indian Ocean tsunami. The
initial response plan calls for transitional and permanent housing projects
in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand. Immediately following the
disaster, the organization began working with the local Habitat offices and
international partner organizations to assess and respond to needs. Habitat
for Humanity is now working on plans to house up to 25,000 families in a
first-phase effort and tens of thousands of families in need in the long
term.

Phase I
The immediate priority is to help families move out of the overcrowded,
diseased and crime-infested camps and other temporary shelters and into
transitional housing.  The transitional houses will consist of a permanent
one-room structure with a veranda and sanitary facilities. The preference is
to build these structures on land sites already owned by the families. The
timeline for the building of transitional housing will differ in each
country, depending on the circumstances. The groundbreaking for the first
house in Sri Lanka could begin as soon as mid-January.

Phase II
Over time, HFHI will begin working with families in transitional housing to
build more permanent structures with additional rooms. HFHI's existing Save
and Build program will be one initiative used in this effort.  With Save and
Build, up to one dozen families save together until there is enough money
for one house to get built or expanded.  The savings cycle continues until
every family has a permanent home. This enables families with the smallest
of incomes to pay for the construction of their own home and it builds
community cohesion and support.

Disaster Response Technical Centers
Supplementing these building initiatives, HFH will develop Disaster Response
Technical Centers in the countries affected. These centers will provide
technical expertise and assistance to families, Habitat affiliates and
partners in the first stages of construction. Eventually, the centers could
become permanent training centers to teach people how to make their own
homes and how to make and use affordable building materials such as earth
blocks, roofing tiles, and doors, windows and frames.

Funding
Habitat for Humanity estimates it will cost approximately US$25 million to
provide the 25,000 transitional houses over 2 years. To satisfy this urgent
need, HFHI headquarters is coordinating a global resource development plan
among its national organizations worldwide. US donations submitted through
the organization's website total $1.4 million to date. Corporate and other
donors within Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand have pledged more
than US$1.9 million in cash and gifts in-kind. Matching funds from Habitat
for Humanity International and other donations could provide more homeless
families secure accommodations.

Country Details

SRI LANKA
Nearly one million people have been displaced in Sri Lanka, including
several Habitat homeowners. HFH Sri Lanka is part of C-Net, an alliance of
10 Christian organizations working to provide transitional shelter. The
first houses could begin to be constructed as soon as mid-January. The
alliance aims to build 20,000 transitional houses initially, 10,000 of which
will be supported directly by Habitat. The long-term goal is to provide
transitional housing for 100,000 families currently without homes. HFH Sri
Lanka is the largest homebuilder in the country, after the government, and
could be responsible for half that total.

The transitional house plan is a 250 square foot, single-room structure with
a room and a verandah or covered living/work space. It would include minimum
sanitary facilities. A second room could be added later to enlarge the home
as funds become available.  Each basic shelter is expected to cost up to
US$500.

While much construction will be new, many homes damaged by the tsunami still
have solid foundations, which will be able to serve as foundations for the
rebuilt homes.  In addition, a great deal of used materials can be recycled
to keep costs low while providing for permanent shelter. HFH Sri Lanka
typically builds masonry homes with wooden or metal roof structures and
corrugated iron sheets, ceramic tile or fiber-cement tiles which it often
produces itself. Even under normal construction circumstances, HFH Sri Lanka
programs are adept at making use of recycled and otherwise available natural
resources such as gravel, stone and timber.

Homeowners will be selected regardless of ethnicity, religion and political
affiliation, and consistent with local demographics. The C-Net project will
prioritize families living below the poverty line, those who have lost
primary wage earners, and those with women as head of households.

To provide for longer-term sustainability, HFH Sri Lanka plans to create
disaster response technical centers in four locations. The organization has
previous experience with a regular, affiliate-based, building and training
center that focuses on production and marketing of building material
components to HFH homeowners. HFH Sri Lanka also works with a corporate
supporter that provides the infrastructure to allow HFH Sri Lanka to train
master masons and others.

HFHI has worked in Sri Lanka since 1994 and has built 3,835 houses,
including more than 1,100 in the past year alone.

INDIA
HFH India is set to focus on hard-hit coastal areas of Tamil Nadu state,
south of the state capital Chennai, where an estimated 10,000 people were
killed by the tsunami. HFH India is working with the Discipleship Center, an
established partner, which has a substantial relief effort under way based
out of the Chennai area.

In an initial response, the Discipleship Center is distributing "family
 kits" of food, clothing and tents to families as part of a state government
plan to encourage people to return home. The work is focusing on
Pondicherry, Nagapattinam, Cuddalore and Kenyakumari, four areas that have
received less help than some areas. There are 82 camps in Nagapattinam and
59 in Kenyakumari. The government has ambitious plans to close camps within
a few weeks.

Habitat affiliates staff and volunteers are working on behalf of
Discipleship Center in Nagapattinam by assessing applications and
distributing the kits to up to 4,000 families.

HFH India plans to provide transitional housing for up to 6,000 families in
the first building phase. Disaster response technical centers will be
located in Pondicherry, Nagapattinam, Cuddalore and Kenyakumari, possibly
based out of current Discipleship Center distribution centers. Each center
would support approximately 1,000 families or more as they build new homes.
The transitional core houses, about half the size of a normal HFH India
unit, would cost approximately US$400-500 each.

HFHI has been working in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh for over 20 years and
has built 10,286 houses in India since 1983.

INDONESIA
In Indonesia, the hardest hit country, Habitat's national office plans to
work in Aceh, at the northern tip of Sumatra island, and on Nias, an island
to the west of Sumatra.

Initial plans are in development to use materials donated or sold at
discount by a major Indonesian steel group to erect transitional steel
housing for displaced families. The housing would include a series of 24
square meter units which would be dismantled for reuse once the families
return to their own land. The initial plan is to house up to 250 families in
Aceh and an additional 200 in Nias.

HFH Indonesia will establish three disaster response technical centers on
Sumatra. As in India, these would be designed to support hundreds and later
thousands of families with expertise and assistance as they build new homes.

HFHI has been working in Indonesia since 1991 and has built 315 houses
there.

THAILAND
Although HFH Thailand does not have activities in the tsunami-affected
south, it is joining the national reconstruction effort. Plans under
development include disaster response technical centers and a target of
1,000 transitional homes costing approximately US$750 each.

Habitat has built 473 houses in Thailand since its first affiliate was
established there in 1998.

##










----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jack Gilles" <icabombay at hotmail.com>
To: <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 5:33 PM
Subject: [Dialogue] News From India


> Dear Colleagues,
>
> Thought you all might be interested in this report sent to us by our
friend
> in India, Marguerite Theophil.
>
> Jack & Judy Gilles
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------
>
> We read so much about religious and communal animosity in India, and yet
> there is also so much like this that goes relatively ureported or
unread....
>
> CUDDALORE, INDIA DECEMBER 29
> Rahmatullah is a tired man. He and his nephew have just returned to their
> masjid after burying an unknown Christian man, identifiable by the black
> thread with the little cross around the neck. They had not forgotten to
put
> a makeshift bamboo cross on the burial mound. He now needs to take the
> infant daughter of Shivakumar, both staying in the masjid, to the doctor.
> ``Maaf karna, kaam bahut pada hai. Hamara president Younus saab se baath
> keejiye,''  ["Please excuse me, there is so much work. Our president, Mr.
> Younus will speak with you"] he says in Hindi, before going out.
>
> In Cuddalore, the second hardest-hit town in Tamil Nadu when the killer
> waves came, a masjid [mosque] and the local jamaat [congregation or
> association] have emerged as the rallying point for thousands of
> fisherfolk---almost all of them Hindus and Christians. There are hardly
any
> Muslim fishermen in Cuddalore, and most of the local Muslims are either
> traders (which explains the Hindi) or have NRI sons in the Gulf. There
have
> been no Muslim casualties.
>
> ``We came to know when people came running to the masjid, minutes after it
> happened. We decided to do what we could do,'' says Mohammed Younus,
> president of the United Islamic Jamaat. ``Isme kya badi bath hai?'' ["why
is
>
> that such a big thing?"] he asks.
>
> The administration is grateful. Says District Collector Gagandeep Singh
> Bedi: ``They have been doing wonderful work, I was with them the whole
last
> night.'' Once th e relief and rescue work is over, Bedi plans to write to
> the state government about their work.
>
> Within minutes of the tsunami striking Pudukuppam, Samayarpettah, Chinnoor
> and other little villages along the Cuddalore coast on Sunday morning,
> Younus had summoned his flock. Within half an hour, his men had left their
> shops and homes for the beaches in their goods vans, cars, two-wheelers
and
> cycles, picking up and rushing the injured to hospitals.
>
> By noon the Jamaat on its own had organised milk for a few hundred babies,
> and food for over 3,000 survivors. By evening, about 3,000 Muslim men were
> tending to over 10,000 Hindus and Chri stians in makeshift camps in the
> local schools.
>
> A few hundred of the survivors were invited to stay in the masjid, where
> they still stay. Many more are in the Jamaat's school, and dozens occupy
its
>
> office building.
>
> For the last three days, the Jamaat has employed 24 cooks working round
the
> clock to feed about 9,000-odd survivors. Some in the relief camps and
others
> in the five battered villages. The administration provides the rice and
> milk, and the Jamaat buys the vegetables and
> everything else on its own. There are about 20,000 men under the Jamaat,
and
> the huge community kitchens that it had been using for its frequent
> community feasts were immediately turned into relief kitchens.
>
> As the bodies began piling up, Younus asked his men not to hesitate. And,
> for the last three days, they have been doing what might be unthinkable
for
> many Muslims: carrying bodies on their own shoulders and cremating them.
> ``To the possible extent, we have been making sure that the Hindu bodies
are
> burnt, and Christians are buried. They should not feel offended in
death,''
> Younus reasons.
>
> Younus sa ys he hadn't slept or eaten well after the tragedy stuck. He has
> been running around five villages guiding his men, looking after the
> survivors, making things work.
>
> It was only when the Army moved in yesterday to Pudukuppam, which suffered
> the heaviest toll, that the Jamaat withdrew from that village. But for the
> other four, it is still the only solace. ``It's
> all God's will. Inshallah [God willing], they will all begin life well in
a
> few weeks,'' he says.
>
> Younus says none of his over 3,000 men will leave until the survivors are
> back on their feet. ``We will continue to raise money to feed them for as
> long as they need. They are welcome to be with us as long as they want,''
> Younus says.
>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>
>
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