That’s why an Oxfam America emergency response launched in La Pelota last October sought not only to meet people’s immediate needs, but to help them mitigate the risks of their community for the future.
When it rains hard, La Pelota is one of the first communities in the area to flood, in part because a vigorously growing plant called la ninfa clogs the local waterways. The plant is a sign of another problem people face: poor infrastructure for sanitation. Most families rely on pit latrines whose contaminants feed the growth of la ninfa.
In October, Tropical Depression 12-E hit. It rained for almost two weeks straight. On one side of La Pelota the lake overflowed, and on the other side its natural drain spilled its banks.
“It began to rain quite a lot. Little by little, the lake drained, but then the water level rose as it continued to rain,” said Juan Francisco Flores, a 32-year-old community member. “The lake doesn’t flow fast enough through the channel. The water backs up and that’s what floods the community… The stream was flooding on one side and the lake on the other. We were isolated.”
The response from the community to the flooding was well planned and evacuation was timely, due to preparedness work that had been done by Oxfam partner Fundación Maquilishuat (FUMA), in recent years. However, damage to crops was severe.
Together with FUMA and the World Food Programme, Oxfam America launched a food-for-work initiative that not only helped families in La Pelota survive in the first months after the emergency, but reduced the risk they would face in the future. FUMA and citizens of La Pelota decided to clean out the channel to allow the water to flow more easily and prevent flooding. Oxfam provided material to do the work, FUMA provided monitoring and technical assistance, and the families carried out the work.
The project provided people with 100 pounds of corn, 33 pounds of rice, 20 pounds of beans, and a gallon of cooking oil, in exchange for 80 hours of work a month.
“The food-for-work project has been well received. It was very effective to implement this project at this time of year, when people usually don’t have work,” says Sandra Quinteros of FUMA. “There’s been a selection process for the FFW program, with several criteria—that they lost at least 50 percent of their production; that they live on less than two dollars a day; that they have many children or older adults to care for; that they are day laborers; and that they are willing to work.”
The food-for-work project has been implemented in 99 poor communities like La Pelota, in 15 municipalities throughout El Salvador. A total of 3,800 families earned a three-month supply of corn, beans, rice, and oil for a family of five, enabling them to recover from their losses and now live in better prepared communities.
]]>For days, a small team of local aid providers has been delivering essentials like tanks of clean water, sanitation and hygiene supplies, and cooking equipment to the shelters, expanding and complementing the National Civil Protection System. Their initial action was so swift that by the time the president declared a national state of emergency, thousands of displaced people were already benefiting from their work.
The aid workers are members of Salvadoran organizations, groups that are willing to put all their other work on hold when disaster strikes. And they are not just foot soldiers—they are experts, able to survey a shelter in the midst of an emergency and within hours get key relief materials delivered and water tanks installed that meet international standards for quality.
“There is this core of ten or fifteen people on the team who are working day and night,” says Karina Copen, Oxfam’s humanitarian program officer in El Salvador. “They’re so dedicated."
The core team on the ground is never entirely alone. All across the country, they are supported by community leaders who have been trained in the basics of caring for the public health needs of their people during emergencies. And they are backed by Oxfam.
For the past four years, Oxfam has led an effort to build the capacity of local Salvadoran communities, municipalities, and aid groups for handling emergencies like earthquakes and floods. Multi-day seminars and hands-on disaster simulations have helped transform the desire to help into hard-core expertise.
“In some ways, it would be easier to bring in a team of Oxfam specialists to do the work in emergencies,” says Copen. “But it wouldn’t be nearly as effective.”
“In a disaster, communities are the first responders,” she explains. “Before local or international aid agencies or government officials arrive, the affected communities need to make decisions and act.” So, training community leaders in the basics of public health—organizing shelters, maintaining sanitary conditions, and making sure people are drinking clean water—has been a top priority.
Training a core team of water and sanitation specialists has been even more labor-intensive, but everyone has benefited.
“In this emergency, team members have been able to come up with accurate technical assessments and then implement the response,” she says.
Confident in the team’s ability to handle the work on the ground, Copen and colleague Enrique García, Oxfam’s regional humanitarian coordinator, are able to focus on coordination.
The result: an effective and smooth-running disaster response that draws energy from its own success. “The people we’ve trained are not sitting around waiting for someone to tell them what to do,” says Copen. “They know how to help their communities, and they are stoked.”
Now that the rains have eased and the sun has appeared, everyone in the shelters is eager to go home.
But the emergency doesn’t stop here. In the region known as the Bajo Lempa, the floods struck harder than anyone had seen in many years. Towns and villages are still deep in muck, their wells contaminated and their latrines flooded.
Now, Oxfam and the team are turning their attention to making home communities safe. The most pressing need, says Copen, is potable water.
There’s more to face: food shortages may threaten the recovery. Forty percent of the corn crop and 77 percent of the bean harvest have been lost to the floods, and prices are shooting up already. Oxfam is exploring ways to address the most urgent needs.
After days of ceaseless work, Copen sounds tired but hopeful.
“I’m always moved by the commitment of our partners, but this time I was also moved by the communities. They’re organizing themselves. They haven’t slept. They’re tending to each other’s needs. And they’re going back to their homes to start again.”
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]]>On January 13, 2001, a powerful earthquake shook El Salvador. In San José Costa Rica, houses collapsed, many residents suffered broken bones, and a four-year-old girl was killed. The main road was destroyed, so for a time the community was cut off from outside help.
In the aftermath of the 2001 earthquake, Oxfam teamed up with local partner REDES with the goal of helping Costa Rica and many other Salvadoran communities prevent future earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural events from becoming full-scale disasters.
The REDES program in Costa Rica is grounded in a community emergency committee whose members have taken charge of evacuation, communications, shelter, first aid, and other key tasks. After mapping out the risks and resources of the village, REDES and the committee developed an emergency-response plan designed to ensure that everyone—including those living in hazardous locations and people with limited mobility—could reach safety in the early hours of an emergency. A two-way radio was installed, providing the community with access to the REDES base, which is staffed 24 hours a day to handle emergency communications. REDES trained community members in first aid and other skills that are essential for first responders, and the community held drills to simulate emergencies.
In October of 2005, Hurricane Stan pounded El Salvador and put Costa Rica's preparations to the test. High winds, heavy rains, landslides, and washed-out roads that isolated the village all portended tragedy, yet the town suffered no deaths or serious injuries. At a gathering of the community's emergency committee and Oxfam and REDES staff, we heard about what happened from the people who lived through it.
As quickly as possible after the hurricane struck, Claudia Dalila Sánchez, who headed up the evacuation committee, led her team on a tour of the community. They evacuated people trapped by landslides and caught in other precarious situations, and they monitored the rising waters of Lago de Ilopango. "When the earthquake happened, we didn't know enough," she said. "For Stan, we had better information about how to take people out of danger."
"In both the 2001 earthquake and Hurricane Stan, the roads were destroyed so no vehicles could come in," explained Miguel Martínez, San José Costa Rica's emergency committee coordinator. "But the difference with Stan was that we were organized. After the earthquake, people didn't have the consciousness to help each other, but after Stan, the community was united. We scheduled turns so people could work on the road, and in a short time, we were able to clear it."
Carmen Sosa is a shy woman who waited until all seven of the committee leaders had spoken before telling her story. "During the earthquake, we didn't know what to do. My house fell. My husband was hurt by a roof tile that fell on his head. And since I didn't know what to do, I just cried. I saw all my things destroyed and thought, 'This is it. I don't have anything left.' But since REDES has given us training, we now know what we can do in these cases."
Carmen concluded with a self-assured smile that left us feeling that something about this program—either the new skills she's learned or the knowledge that she no longer has to face emergencies alone—has added a measure of confidence to her life.
Oxfam's partners work in many communities around the country, helping them take charge effectively at times of emergency. But our program goes far beyond teaching the nuts and bolts of emergency response: one of our partners co-authored a law that has created a role for communities in El Salvador's national system of disaster preparedness and response, and which requires for the first time that disaster preparedness be incorporated into development planning.
"We are working to help impoverished communities gain both the skills and the voice in the political process that they need to prevent future emergencies from becoming disasters," says Michael Delaney, Oxfam America's Director of Humanitarian Response. "So far, signs point to success."
Working through REDES and other partners, Oxfam America's disaster risk reduction programs in El Salvador are now reaching an estimated 200,000 people.
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