Build Rescue Boats in Flood Prone Communities

Thanks to your amazing support we’ve now provided a total of ten flood rescue boats as a result of this GlobalGiving project.

Over the years these boats have rescued literally hundreds of families trapped by rising flood water. However, those families also need somewhere to evacuate to ride out the floods.

Sadly, for some families, there isn’t an evacuation centre nearby. So, for much of the last few months we’ve been making further improvements to the Banaba Livelihood and Evacuation Centre.

Having built and equipped nineteen family cubicles in the building last year we recently started work on another twenty-four. In total this will allow forty-three families to use the building during disasters.

We’ve also installed more ceiling fans to keep everyone cool, and provided a small solar system that can power a water purifier, phones and emergency lighting if mains power is cut off during a storm. To make sure families can stay clean we’ve also undertaken some bathroom maintenance.

When complete this work will make the centre fully operational, and so we’re now turning our attention back to rescue boats once again. And, thanks to your incredible generosity we now have enough to fund another big rescue boat!

We asked Ka Noli, the founder of our local partner organisation, Buklod Tao, which community most needed this next boat and he had this to say:

“Salamat Po (Thank you) for this wonderful news of another boat!

This should go to the congested river community in Zone 685 of Barangay Ampid 1. They have one small boat that was utilized during typhoons, especially last year with Typhoon Narding but it does not suffice because of the boat's limited capacity.

The place was also heavily inundated by Tropical Storm Ketchana (or Ondoy) in 2009 and many houses were damaged just like in Banaba.

The next nearest boat is about 1.5 kilometers from Zone 685, same barangay. This is the Chris Chaggar boat that was handed over last year to San Jose de Ampid Parish and is needed to protect the families there.

So, we wish to augment the flood rescue capacity of Zone 685 with a large boat of its own”

We echo Ka Noli’s thanks to you for making this possible, and work on the new boat will start very soon. We’ll be sure to keep you posted on progress right here on GlobalGiving.

If you have any questions meanwhile please don’t hesitate to email Andy@IDVolunteers.org. I would be delighted to hear from you.