Help Andy Help His Fellow Disaster Survivors

Thank you so much for helping me to help my fellow disaster survivors.

Over the last few months your donations have enabled IDV to keep supporting its locally led projects in both Haiti and the Philippines.

In Haiti we’ve continued to help provide a safe home, food and school to the children at the Hands Together to Defend the Children (HTDC) Orphanage in Port-au-Prince.

The children are all doing great and there have been developments at the orphanage that we wanted to share with you.

The most important is that the orphanage director, Carlo, is now managing two separate facilities. In addition to the main orphanage Carlo is now also running a “crèche” that works with the Haitian Institute for Social Welfare & Research (IBESR) to find adoptive families for children aged six and under.

The new facility, which is registered separately from the main orphanage, provides a safe home for these children while their cases are being processed. Sadly, the government can’t afford to pay Carlo to look after the children in advance, but he does receive funding after each case is completed.

It’s a lot of work, and takes careful management, but last year Carlo was able to earn enough to run the “crèche” and also help to support the main orphanage as well. These contributions from Carlo aren’t nearly enough on their own, so the support of donors like you is still vital in keeping the kids housed, fed and in school. However, this new income stream makes a difference and is great for their overall resilience.

There’s still work to be done to make the orphanage sustainable in the long-term but this is real progress driven by Carlo himself, and something to be celebrated. Thank you so much for allowing us to continue helping the orphanage as they move further towards financial independence.

There’s also been great progress near Manila in the Philippines.

In our last project report we announced that we’d started fundraising to equip the Banaba Livelihood & Evacuation Centre so that it can finally host evacuees during typhoons and floods.

Well, with the support of donors like you, I’m pleased to report that we’re now almost ready to start work installing cubicles, and providing mats, pillows and blankets, so that 110 families have somewhere safe to sleep during disasters.

We’re delighted with these continued impacts in both countries, and it’s only because of your support to meet IDV’s underlying costs that they’ve been made possible.

However, when we originally posted this page on GlobalGiving it was with a view to expanding our work and projects around the world. Since then we’ve transitioned back to being a volunteer run organisation and will only be supporting our existing projects moving forward

As a result we’ll soon be closing this page on GlobalGiving. We’ll keep fundraising for both the orphanage and the evacuation centre and posting regular updates on both project pages. So, please do keep supporting our work there if you can.

For now, thank you so much again for helping me to help my fellow disaster survivors. Your confidence, trust and support kept IDV (and me) going during a difficult transition and I’ll be forever grateful for your friendship.

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

With the new year almost upon us I want to thank you for your amazing generosity in 2017.

As you’ll know from reading previous project reports it’s been a year of transition for IDV as we returned to being an entirely volunteer powered charity. However, your incredible support still helped us to raise almost £72,000 (approaching $100,000) in total during our 2017 financial year.

We think this is an amazing result, and it’s enabled to keep supporting our partner-led projects in Haiti and the Philippines. Thank you so much.

Your ongoing generosity has also continued to inspire and motivate us, and as a result we’re looking forward to making even more of an impact in 2018. Our plans for the year ahead are to focus on two areas.

Firstly, we’ll continue supporting the HTDC orphanage in Port-au-Prince, while hopefully moving them further towards self-sustainability. We made good progress in this area last year, by purchasing the orphanage a minibus it could rent out, but since then we’ve struggled to make further headway on the sustainability challenge.

Happily, one of our volunteers, Schnyeder, recently visited the orphanage to help us plan for the year ahead. His initial priority was to obtain some new hi-res photos of the children to help with immediate fundraising, and we’re attaching some to this report.

Schnyeder then spent time assessing the longer-term challenges the orphanage faces, and possible solutions to them, before sending us his report and recommendations. We’ll be considering these recommendations in detail over the coming weeks and will include more updates in our next project report. So, stay tuned for details.

Secondly, during the year ahead we’re planning to equip the Banaba Livelihood & Evacuation Centre so that it can finally host evacuees during typhoons and floods. We made great progress on the centre in 2017, including by rendering the outside of the building and laying new concrete floors throughout.

So, in 2018 we’ll turn our attention to installing cubicles, and providing mats, pillows and blankets, so that 110 families have somewhere safe to sleep during disasters.

We’ll need to raise around £7,000 (approx $9,300) to buy these and other items, like more fans, and we’ve already started fundraising on GlobalGiving to cover the costs.

Overall, we’re excited for what 2018 will bring and incredibly grateful for your continued support. Your donations enable us to cover our basic running costs and this gives us the confidence to make these plans for the year ahead.

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

Thanks to your incredible support I’m delighted to announce that our latest flood rescue boat was officially handed over to its host community last week.

Prior to the ceremony the boat received it's paint job and dedication stickers. Moving forward The Nova Mills will protect 420 families in the community of Armpac, near Manila, from frequent flooding caused by typhoons and heavy rains.

This is IDV’s eighth flood rescue boat, and over the years its sister vessels have rescued hundreds of families trapped by the rapidly rising waters. Yet for me, this boat is particularly poignant and personal.

Our rescue boats have traditionally been funded through a dedication or sponsorship model. For example, a previous boat was dedicated to the memory of Helen Thompson, a long-time friend and supporter of IDV who tragically died in late 2013.

Helen’s family went on to raise over £50,000 for our work in the Philippines, and in 2015 we wanted to mark her legacy by naming a rescue boat after her.

The year before, we honoured the generosity of the several smaller donors who had contributed through this website by naming another rescue boat The GlobalGiving.

All of our previous boats have been named in similar ways, either in dedication to supporters’ loved ones or in thanks to single corporate sponsors or fundraising teams.

However, this case was different. The funding for this boat came from many small donations, and these donations were received via several different websites. So, there wasn’t a ready-made name for the new Armpac boat.

Yet for me there was still a very obvious choice in The Nova Mills.

I first met Nova in 1995 during my first year at university, and a few years later our friendship developed into a relationship. That relationship strengthened and almost five years later Nova and I set off to travel the world together.

Our plan was to see the sights and have some fun before returning to the UK to start a family. Sadly things didn’t work out as planned.

Just seven weeks into our trip the 2004 tsunami slammed into the town of Khao Lak, Thailand, where Nova and I had been celebrating Christmas with friends.

We had just a few seconds warning before our beachside bungalow was demolished with both of us inside. That was the last time I ever saw the woman I loved.

Recovering from the tsunami and Nova’s death was a long and painful process. Along the way I returned to Thailand for a year to volunteer. I then worked in Peru for nine months after an earthquake, before going on to co-found IDV in 2008. In the years since IDV has helped over 23,000 of my fellow survivors in Haiti, the Philippines and Nepal.

Yet, while all this has fundamentally stemmed from losing Nova in the tsunami, I’d never explicitly put her name to anything before.

So, with funding in place for a new rescue boat, and with no single sponsor or donor in waiting, I thought it was finally time I honoured the incredible woman the world lost in the tsunami.

It seems a small tribute in many ways, but one I’m happy to be able to make. And, while your donations haven’t directly funded this new boat, they have enabled us to keep us the lights on at IDV, and inspired me to keep doing what I can, when I can. So without you, this latest boat wouldn’t have been possible at all. Thanks so much for your continued generosity.

Moving forward, I’ll be sure to keep you updated on this project in the Philippines, as well as our others in Haiti. If you have any questions in the interim please don’t hesitate to email Andy@IDVolunteers.org. I would be delighted to hear from you.

The last few months have marked a major transition for IDV, but thanks to your incredible support we’ve continued helping my fellow disaster survivors around the world.

The big change came at the end April when I sadly resigned as a paid employee of the charity. Although I’ve continued to offer my services as a volunteer, the nature of this new arrangement means that I obviously have much less time available.

Happily, we’ve still been making a vital impact around the world nonetheless.

For example, although our international volunteer operations in Nepal closed in early April we’ve continued to support earthquake survivors through local actors, including our amazing local Operations Manager, Anamica.

Over the last few months we’ve worked with Anamica to provide library books for over 250 children at three schools in the districts of Kavre, Mustang and Makawanpur. The kids at these schools were still struggling to learn after the earthquakes, and providing these books was a simple and effective way to improve their overall situation.

The school in Makawanpur was in need of further help however, and so Anamica returned again to provide uniforms, school bags and stationery for its 62 children. As always the children were delighted to see Anamica and receive the badly needed supplies, and we’ve included a couple of photos from the day in this report.

Yet, our important work hasn’t just been confined to Nepal. In addition to our ongoing projects in Haiti we’ve also continued to work with our incredible partners in Manila, Buklod Tao.

One of the ways we partner with Buklod Tao is to provide flood rescue boats and in our last project report I described how our support in constructing a new boat workshop had helped this project to thrive.  

Well, I’m now even more excited to announce that we recently started construction of a brand new flood rescue boat for the vulnerable community of Armpac.

Armpac is located in the municipality of San Mateo, just outside Manila. The area is developing rapidly, but the benefits are rarely shared equally. Thousands of informal settlers and poor renters live in slum housing along the many riverbanks, which regularly burst their banks during typhoons and monsoon rains.

Because of the danger faced by these families Armpac was one of our top priorities when we first started building boats back in 2013.

The boat we originally provided has protected the community ever since, and over the years it’s rescued dozens of people trapped by rapidly rising flood water. However, the situation in the area is now worsening again, partly due to the success of San Mateo which has sadly left these families behind.

Buklod Tao’s President, Ka Noli, explains:

“Since the hand-over of the first fiber-glass rescue boat in sition Armpac, the number of residents has ballooned to 421 families! The place is also more flood prone than before. It’s getting worse not only because of the number of people, but also because there is now a road network - a national road (they call it C-6) traversing through the area.

So far there is no new construction of drainage in the place and the houses being relocated are left to make their own drainage. I foresee a worsening of flooding scenario in this place. Another boat, this time a bigger one, is urgently needed for Armpac.

Can you please help?”

This was a really important request and one we were very keen to help with. And thanks to the amazing generosity of donors like you work has now started on the boat’s construction.

The first Armpac boat is a small 8’x4’ model, which is perfect for narrow urban streets. However, for the new boat we’re providing a bigger 12’x5’ version. These aren’t as maneuverable but can carry more people, and the two boats will complement each other perfectly.

Thank you so much for helping to make all this continued work possible. While these projects might not seem as glamorous as international volunteers building new classrooms, they’re still making a vital impact to disaster survivors around the world.

I’ll be sure to keep you updated about these and our other projects as they progress, and we remain incredibly grateful for your continued support. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to email Andy@IDVolunteers.org. I would be delighted to hear from you.

Thanks so much for your continued generosity over the last few months.

Although we’ve been undergoing some major changes at IDV, thanks to your amazing support we've continued to provide vital help to disaster survivors overseas.

What’s more, with your ongoing help, we hope that we'll be able to keep supporting key local partners into the future. I’ll return to this in a moment, but I do have to make some sad announcements first.

Due to our UK funding situation IDV will no longer have paid staff after April. This will reduce our ability to support our overseas projects, and so we’ve had to make the hard decision to close down some of our operations.

This includes everything in Tacloban, and also our international volunteer deployment in Nepal. While we’re saddened about these closures, it’s still amazing to reflect on everything we’ve achieved.

IDV was active in Tacloban for over three years, and during this time we supported almost 12,000 survivors of super typhoon Haiyan. Our work, which ranged from providing immediate relief to rebuilding and repairing 25 classrooms, was only possible thanks to donors like you.

In Nepal we welcomed over 100 international volunteers, who directly helped over 7,100 earthquake survivors by providing relief and rebuilding schools. This is an incredible result, and we marked the end of our international volunteer operations in Nepal by completing our work at the Shree Bal Shiksha school.

The day, which included a WASH education session, was a celebration of the impact we've made for the school's 600 children. By providing new classrooms, school furniture, toilets and handwashing stations, our work has transformed the educational environment for these kids. Again, all this was only because of incredible donors like you.

And, while we’re saddened about the end of this work, the future for our projects in Haiti and Manila is thankfully more secure.

Having previously paid the 2017 rent for the HTDC orphanage in Port-au-Prince, in February we also provided the children with their own mini-bus. The orphanage is now renting the bus out to earn its own sustainable income, and this has already reduced its reliance on our donors by a third.

In Manila, our local partners are an amazing group called Buklod Tao. They also work with other organisations however, and one of those organisations, the Norwegian Mission Alliance - Philippines (NMAP), recently placed an order with Buklod Tao for five new flood rescue boats!

Our previous support of Buklod Tao's boat workshop played a key role in securing this order, which will help to protect flood prone communities, while also providing an income to poor residents trained in boat building.

Yet, while HTDC and Buklod Tao are becoming more self-sufficient, there is still a need for ongoing help from IDV. And your ongoing generosity shows that we have many supporters who want to continue helping.

So, we’ve decided that we’ll continue doing what we can on a voluntary basis after April.

The nature of this voluntary support means that we'll less time available, but we hope that by adapting, we'll be able to continue supporting our partners in Haiti and Manila, even if our capacity is reduced.

Our ongoing success with crowd-funding, particularly via GlobalGiving, gives us confidence in these plans, but we'll reassess the situation as we approach the end of our financial year, on August 31, 2017.

Again, thank you so much for your continued support and understanding during this transition. Even after April we will still have some essential project support costs in the UK, so your help will continue to be vital to IDV running high quality, high impact projects overseas. Thanks for sticking with us.

I’ll be sure to keep you updated moving forward, and once again I remain incredibly grateful for your continued confidence and support. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to email Andy@IDVolunteers.org. I would be delighted to hear from you.