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.
]]>Whenever an earthquake or hurricane hits, it is the poorest people who face the greatest risks. They often have no choice but to live in substandard housing that is not built to withstand the intensity of a high-magnitude quake or flood. This means poor and marginalized people are often more vulnerable to injury and death. To make matters worse, often those who do survive have the fewest material resources to recover from disasters. While earthquakes and hurricanes cannot be prevented, the fact that poor communities are disproportionately affected is not a natural condition. It is a human-made problem that results from cultural, socio-economic, political, and institutional factors.
Haiti has a painful history of political instability and humanitarian disasters. The country is still recovering from four serious storms that hit within a few weeks of each other in 2008. Hurricanes and earthquakes exacerbate extreme poverty: they damage neglected infrastructure like roads and drinking water systems, and further degrade the environment. The effects of the January 2010 earthquake will be felt long after the initial recovery period. Survivors—making do with limited resources—face years of hard work to recover. However, disaster losses in the short and long term can be substantially reduced by taking measures to decrease peoples’ vulnerability and build their resilience in the face of hazardous events, whether it is improving immediate living conditions or addressing all the underlying causes of poverty that contribute to increased suffering at the time of emergencies.
Oxfam has been working in Haiti to create sustainable means of earning a living, help Haitians reduce their vulnerability to disasters, and strengthen and support people’s ability to hold their government accountable. These long-term efforts meant that, when the earthquake hit, we already had staff on the ground ready to work with local organizations to respond to the humanitarian crisis.
No country can fully withstand the impact of an earthquake like the one that has rocked Haiti, especially a nation saddled with deep poverty and minimal infrastructure. We know that the communities we work with are strong and determined and will respond to this disaster as they have others. We have a shared responsibility to ensure that Haitians have the resources they need to avoid unnecessary suffering, both now and in the long run.
Help now by donating to our Haiti Earthquake Response Fund.
]]>That was 15 years ago. Today, clean water in the small communities of El Recuerdo and Agua Zarca is as precious as ever—and still hard to get. There's no turning on the tap over a kitchen sink and letting the gallons gush. Here, many people trudge to a communal source, fill their jugs, and lug the heavy load home again. But seasonal flooding—sometimes hugely destructive and, with climate change, possibly becoming more severe—contaminates many of the area's hand-dug wells, exposing people to waterborne illnesses.
But now, with the help of Oxfam America and its local partner, PROVIDA, the well that Cruz worked so hard to dig on the school grounds in El Recuerdo is pumping enough clean water to satisfy the drinking needs not only of the students but of about 80 families in the surrounding area. The well is one of five "healthy wells" in southern Zacatecoluca province PROVIDA lined, surrounded with a filter, capped to ensure its cleanliness, and outfitted with a pump that sends water to a large tank for chlorination and storage.
"The families in this area are living in extreme poverty, living as subsistence farmers or low paid day laborers in the nearby sugar cane plantations," says Karina Copen, an Oxfam humanitarian program officer. "They face numerous challenges in having to adapt to the increased frequency and intensity of the flooding in their area. With access to a healthy well, they can at least know that in the next flood, they will have a safe source of water for their families and the good health that comes along with it."
Adaptations, such as these healthy wells, are essential for Salvadoran families living in the department of La Paz in the lower region of the Lempa River where seasonal rains, tropical depressions, and hurricanes, make it one of the country's most flood-prone areas.
Coupled with those natural hazards is the fact that communities in the region have significantly less access to improved water sources and sanitation than other parts of the country. The "healthy wells" along with 27 new composting latrines have been a boon to families in the area.
"Kids are getting sick less; families are healthier," says Santos Efrain Coto, one of the local leaders in El Recuerdo. "When they drank contaminated water they got diarrhea and parasites."
The improved wells are based on a model that's new to El Salvador and designed by an organization called Swiss Labour Assistance. Besides having their tops sealed with cement to prevent polluted flood waters from slopping in, the wells are lined with a type of plastic pipe, known as polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, that extends down into the aquifer. Packed around the outside of the lining is a filter of volcanic rock that prevents contamination from seeping through underground.
At the El Recuerdo school one day recently, teacher Ana Elsa Cubias describes how students used to bring their own water from home to drink during the school day. Now, the refurbished well guarantees them a clean supply right on the spot.
"They're drinking water from a protected source and the kids have water right in the classroom," says Cubias.
A short distance from the classrooms sits a large plastic tank, sky blue and able to hold 1,100 liters of water pumped fresh from the well. Chlorinated, the water from the tank flows to two taps standing just outside the gates to the school. They're accessible to whoever is driving or walking by. And to ensure the stored water stays safe for drinking, the water committee arranges to have the tank cleaned every couple of weeks—a task that falls to a child small enough to wiggle inside and scrub the interior walls with a brush and bleach.
"We make sure he bathes before he gets in the tank," adds Coto, the local leader.
In Agua Zarca, a few communities over, Jose Luis Funes Cruze says that before PROVIDA and Oxfam installed the new well, most of the local residents depended on their own backyard wells for drinking water—and that was a problem.
"The household wells take on a lot of rain water and a lot of filthy water when there's flooding," says Cruz, pointing in the direction of the polluted San Antonio River, which spills its banks during big storms. "The things people throw in—there are pigs up river. And the cheese factory is up river."
In the past, when their drinking supply has been contaminated, families in Agua Zarca have had to rely on the government or aid groups to truck in drinking water for them.
But now, with a new communal well their supply of drinking water is much improved.
"We're very grateful—the whole community is—to have that water," says Blanca Lidia Jiménez, who lives close to the well makes about six trips a day to fetch enough water for the seven people in her house. "We don't get sick so much when we drink the water from this well. The little kids would get swollen bellies, but with the new well that problem has been solved."
Still, the situation in Agua Zarca points to the challenges of providing clean water in this area. The community's new well was built on the only land available: next to a cow pasture—an arrangement that could be problematic during the wet season when rain sloshes manure about and allows it to seep into the groundwater.
The deep plastic lining on the well and its volcanic-rock filter help, though, says Guillermo Morán, a professor and researcher at the University of El Salvador's Earth Sciences Institute. He worked with Oxfam America and another of its partners, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI), to evaluate the effectiveness of the wells while studying the health practices of families who use them.
The study is an important component of Oxfam's public health work: It promotes accountability and offers a different model for aid groups by linking their work with that of universities.
"We have the field experience and they have the technical expertise," says Miriam Aschkenasy, Oxfam America's public health specialist. "Together we're able to evaluate programs at a higher standard and at one that increases accountability."
In its draft report, HHI said that individuals who live in communities with "healthy wells" were less likely to have diarrhea and reported fewer cases of the illness during the time of the study. But the draft report also revealed that in two of those communities, some people were still using hand-dug wells for their drinking water while other people from places without "healthy wells" were making the trek to a community that had one to fetch their water.
"The study gives us insight in a way we couldn't have anticipated," says Aschkenasy. "It gives us an idea of where to focus in the future. We now know we need to find a way to encourage people who are still relying on the hand-dug wells to use the healthy ones instead. And it gives us great incentive to build more of them."
]]>Members of Oxfam International have also provided grant support for neighborhood social programs, such as the world-renowned Martin Luther King Center, a leader in popular education.
Cuba's civil evacuation and protection system is widely renowned for its excellence. Oxfam works with Cuba's Civil Defense to help communities prepare for disasters and has helped Cuba significantly reduce its vulnerability to hurricanes. In 2004 Oxfam America, as part of Oxfam International, documented these experiences and lessons in the publication "Weathering the Storm: Lessons in Risk Reduction in Cuba."
Gender equality is a priority in all the projects Oxfam supports. While Cuban women enjoy a wide array of rights, there continue to be gaps, particularly at home. Supporting research and sensitivity training, particularly in regards to violence against women, is a priority for Oxfam in Cuba.
As part of Oxfam International, Oxfam America has contributed roughly $1.1 million to Oxfam International's work in Cuba since 1995. All of Oxfam America's grants were approved by the US Department of State, and mostly supported agricultural transformation projects designed to improve food security.
]]>Only hours before, news of a double disaster had reached Oxfam America's office in San Salvador. A volcanic eruption, followed by an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 had launched an exodus from the capital city. Hundreds of thousands of people were on the move, rushing from collapsed homes to ill-equipped shelters on the outskirts of town. Oxfam staff scrambled to respond, contacting local partner organizations, government offices, and the UN to begin coordinating aid delivery.
It was a scene from a major disaster. Or perhaps not.
Outside Oxfam's San Salvador office, it was a peaceful day. The loudest sound was the whistling of a flock of clarineros in the trees, not the blaring horns of desperate drivers, and there was no sign that the ground beneath the neighboring buildings had slipped and shuddered.
In fact, this was a scene from a disaster simulation—an elaborate fabrication designed to ensure that the Oxfam staff are poised to respond quickly and effectively in a major emergency. The staff had gathered in the office that morning knowing a "disaster" was coming their way but with no idea what it would turn out to be, until "news flashes" began revealing an emergency that appeared to threaten both the city and the office itself.
First things first: in the simulation as she would in real life, Regional Director Susan Bird made sure all the Oxfam staff and their families were safe. Then she and her staff launched an all-out effort to get aid to the affected communities.
Yet, for hours—just as in real-life emergencies—there were 20 important questions for every answer available. How many people have been affected? Where are they moving to? Who's been left behind? What are the most urgent needs? What are the government and other NGOs planning to do? What support do our partner organizations need to begin delivering aid? Are the displaced people safe? Who needs our help the most? What's our plan of action?
"It's crazy. The numbers are changing every five minutes. It's difficult to get a grasp of what's really going on," said communications officer Tjarda Muller.
"In real emergencies, we have to be swift and coordinated. Lives depend on it." — Dawit Beyene, Oxfam America's deputy director of humanitarian response
Soon, Vanessa Lanza from Oxfam's Boston office was stretched to the limit in her role as staff member of a partner organization, trying to learn about the most urgent needs on the ground as she pulled together a sketch of how many families her group could assist with what kind of aid, along with a budget to submit to aid agencies she hoped would support her. "This is hard. I have so much to do. It's chaos for a partner to respond to the community and at the same time to coordinate all the sources of funding."
In another office, key emergencies staff met with the director to hammer out Oxfam's plan of action.
"We need to look at the risks people are facing," said Susan Bird. The plan would have to consider the potential for looting, aftershocks, crowding, lack of water, disease outbreaks, and violence.
"We're talking about 300,000 displaced people," Enrique Garcia, Oxfam's Regional Humanitarian Coordinator, reminded the group. He described the chaos that can ensue when even relatively small numbers of people gather at emergency shelters like gyms and schools.
The initial action plan began to emerge: the government had announced it would supply aid to the large shelters for displaced people, so Oxfam decided to focus its resources on the under-served groups gathering in informal shelters. But delivering aid after disasters is never simple. Latrines would be crucial for sanitation, but digging pits or trenches would be impossible where people were gathering in paved, urban settings. And the displaced groups would need plenty of clean water for drinking, cooking, and washing, but the staff had learned from past experience that there aren't enough tanker trucks in El Salvador to transport the water that would be needed.
"We'll have to bring trucks in from Guatemala," said Garcia.
Every now and then laughter rippled through the offices as staff members circulated offbeat messages and photos to ease the tension.
But for some, it was hard to keep in mind that this wasn't a real emergency. At age 52, Oxfam staffer Milagro Orellana (or Niña Mila, as she is respectfully called) has experienced many disasters, and the simulation roused painful memories. She recalled the day in 2001 when a powerful earthquake struck El Salvador.
"It was a Saturday, and I had gone to Santa Tecla to buy supplies. When I returned, I heard this sound like a bomb had exploded. I was still on the bus, which was shaking. I saw walls falling down from houses. People started running all over the place. Since it hadn't been that long since the war ended, I thought maybe someone had bombed a building. I was very afraid for the lives of my children." She trembled as she spoke of it. "When I got home I found my family out in the street, screaming."
Oxfam helped her get back onto her feet after the real earthquake, and on this January day she was pleased to help the office hone its skills for future emergencies.
At 4:30 in the afternoon, the organizers brought the simulation to a close. The action plan was complete, the partners had been activated, and the Oxfam response was up and running. The first two days of a disaster response had been squeezed into seven hours, but from the look of the tired faces, some of the staff might as well have lived through 48 hours of a real-time emergency.
Next on their agenda: the crucial final day of the exercise, where the office would map out a plan to improve its disaster readiness.
"It really put us in the mindset of a major emergency and allowed us to have a good look at what we're doing right, and what things we need to do better," said Susan Bird. "In this case, when the stress got too intense, we could remember that it was just an exercise. In a real emergency, we know there are people out there who need our help, and we need to be as prepared as possible to deliver it quickly and effectively."
Niña Mila looked relieved at the end of the day. "I feel good. It was a big experience for me. It made me feel like how I would actually act in a real emergency. I had no idea I could do this. So thank you."
]]>Three people died (including a four-year-old boy, his 14-year-old brother, and their father) and 80 people have taken shelter in the church in the city of Berlin. At the temporary shelter there is a pressing need for drinking water, dry and clean clothes, blankets, personal hygiene kits, mattresses, and medicine. As a first response to this local emergency, Oxfam directed a $12,000 to its partner organizations to provide clothing and hygiene kits, as well as water and sanitations equipment such as 20-liter water tanks for each family to store clean water.
Forecasts call for more heavy rains in the coming days. Oxfam’s partner organizations continue to evacuate communities at risk.
Each year people who live in conditions of poverty confront emergency situations. Because they lack resources, they are forced to construct their homes of weak materials in precarious places, where lands are cheap or abandoned. This makes them more vulnerable to heavy rains.
Oxfam works with organizations to prepare these communities to confront disasters and mitigate the damage they cause. In group training sessions they draw risk maps, form early warning, emergency, and first aid committees, and identify buildings in safer areas that can function as shelters. Once organized and trained, the communities can confront an eventual emergency in a coordinated fashion. Additionally, when organized and trained, these communities are more empowered to demand their rights and do advocacy work with national organizations to achieve changes in the current civil defense law, which gives communities a limited role.
]]>Recovering the coffee crop is not a quick endeavor. In the majority of cases it will be three or four years until the harvest is at its normal level. And cleaning up the destroyed plots of land also takes time. It is an additional task that the coffee growers had to undertake in the moments when they weren't tending to the crops spared by the storm.
The first cooperative we visited was ASUVIM, in the province of Quetzaltenango, where we spoke with the president of the cooperative, Daniel Balux. The principle problem this cooperative faced was that nearly 30 percent of its harvest was affected by black bean, a deformation of the coffee bean that cannot be seen when the coffee is harvested, but only once it is dried. It changes the color and the taste of the coffee, disqualifying it from the gourmet and fair trade markets.
Can you tell us about the black bean problem?
Actually, we detected it here at the mill. We saw that we had black beans, but we didn't think it was so extensive, we thought it was just the first beans. But as we continued with the harvest it was the same. It was the whole harvest. The coffee looked good as parchment coffee but if we look at them all—the ones with a different color, they are black beans. We can't say that our members brought in bad coffee, because the cherries looked good, they didn't even look a little rotten or anything like that. The coffee was good. You can't say to the people, look, bring us better coffee or chose it better—[but] of course when they cup this coffee the cuppers will say it is green coffee, coffee that didn't reach its full maturity. So the aid for the black bean was something necessary [to compensate for the low price]. So, what did we do after all this? Well, thanks to the help that came from you, at least the members got their normal price. At least we could say to them, 'Look, the coffee was shipped at this price, but we are going to help you a little bit and we are going to pay you this much.' The people saw that at least there was an effort behind all this."
In addition to this monetary compensation that was given to the members, what other actions did ASUVIM take to overcome the crisis?
Here 60 percent of what people earn comes from coffee. If there are problems with the coffee, there are problems in the families. Either there is little schooling, or people are unable to complete projects they had planned or there isn't much food. Here in ASUVIM we also helped out with corn. We gave each member 800 pounds of corn. Part of it we donated, the other part the members had to buy. Each family of six consumes about 1,600 pounds of corn per year. [They lost 80 percent of the harvest.] What happened with the 20 percent that they were left with? They ate it in January, maybe into February, but by March they had to buy corn. Then the problem is that when there is high demand for corn, the price rises. So we helped them with this, with 800 pounds. We think it's 50 percent of the corn they eat, we could now say that at least they had corn to eat.
The other damage we suffered as an organization is related to the landslide here next to the patio where we sun dry the coffee. With the rain, little by little, we were losing more of it. So we were faced with an emergency. Either we did something or our patio would collapse. And the more time that passed, the worse it was. So we received aid from Oxfam America because the construction is big. But it was necessary because if we lose the patio, it'd be an additional expense.. We are still constructing, but we are making the wall. We aren't doing something that is simply going to fall apart next year and then we would have to invest in it all over again. We want to invest, to spend and if that means chipping in ourselves, we do it.
]]>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.
]]>Cuba is a case study in successful disaster risk reduction. At the national level, Cuba's disaster legislation, public education on disasters, meteorological research, early warning system, effective communication system for emergencies, comprehensive emergency plan, and Civil Defense structure are important resources in avoiding disaster. At the local level, high levels of literacy, developed infrastructure in rural areas and access to reliable health care are crucial for national efforts in disaster mitigation, preparation and response. Weathering the Storm: Lessons in Risk Reduction from Cuba presents a comprehensive overview of the Cuban model of risk reduction in disaster mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery, and explores what may be adapted from this model in other countries. The report focuses on specific recommendations for Central America.
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