Help Filipino Communities Prepare for Disaster

Thanks to your incredible support the Banaba Livelihood & Evacuation Centre is currently a hive of community activity.

Our partners Buklod Tao, who manage the Centre on a day-to-day basis, recently marked their 24th year of community development and disaster risk reduction activities. And the Centre was the perfect place to hold their annual general assembly of members.

The assembly saw the election of this year’s Officers, and the stage you helped to construct last spring played an important role in the process by allowing candidates’ speeches to be clearly heard by all.

The building’s boat workshop, which your donations helped to fund in 2016, has also been put to great use recently. The Norwegian Mission Alliance - Philippines (NMAP) were so happy with their last order of five rescue boats that they recently ordered another two.

These new boats will help to protect flood prone communities nearby, and their manufacture also provides an income to residents in Banaba who are at risk of disaster. This “double benefit” wouldn’t have been possible without your initial investment in the boat workshop. Thanks so much for making all this work possible.

In our last project report we also described how we’d been able to provide Buklod Tao with a second hand vehicle. For this report we asked their founder, Ka Noli, to give some examples of how this was helping their work.

“We would be at a loss if we did not have the truck. For example, when there was a sudden change of venue for the community visit of some ten delegates from Africa, Asia, and United Kingdom of the “Disasters and Emergencies Preparedness Programme” we had to quickly drive to Brgy. Maybunga, Pasig, Barangay Hall, where two community visits were wrapped up into one. Fortunately, the ever-ready and available truck was with us.

Also, thanks to the vehicle, we did not [have to] hire a jeepney to haul in three office tables that was offered to be handed over by the Ecowaste Coalition. Now, we have three additional office tables for free.

The truck also serves as transport of mothers, children and youth to the Centre to attend varied community initiatives, like education through interactive games, and to learn to draw and paint. Salamat Po for this help.”

We want to echo Ka Noli’s thanks, and with 2018 upon us we hope you’ll consider supporting even more work at the centre.

This year we’re turning our attention to installing cubicles in the building, as well as providing mats, pillows and blankets so that 110 families have somewhere safe to sleep during disasters.

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

We’ll be sure to keep you posted as our work at the Centre continues, and if you ever have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email Andy@IDVolunteers.org. I would be delighted to hear from you.

Thanks to your amazing generosity we’re continuing to help Filipino communities prepare for disaster.

In our last project report we described how your donations had supported another round of building improvements at the Banaba Livelihood and Evacuation Centre, including concreting, tiling and bathroom maintenance.

Since then we’ve continued fundraising to undertake more building work, which is still needed at the Centre. While those efforts are ongoing we’ve turned our attention to providing help in other ways.

For example, late last month we provided the community of Armpac with a brand new flood rescue boat. Moving forward The Nova Mills will protect 420 families from frequent flooding caused by typhoons and heavy rains.

This was the eighth rescue boat donors like you have provided to communities in and around Banaba since 2013. Over the years its sister vessels have rescued hundreds of families trapped by rapidly rising waters.

The boat workshop is on the top floor of the Centre, so your previous donations to help make the building watertight also played a role in making the production of this boat possible. We’re incredibly grateful for this, and the The Nova Mills has personal significance for me as well - so thank you so much!

Also, earlier this summer, we were able to provide even more practical support to families in Banaba.

At the beginning of 2017, and after three incredible years supporting typhoon recovery in the city of Tacloban, we decided the time had come to close down our operations there.

However, this presented the question of what to do with the small trusty trucks which had enabled us to haul volunteers and building materials around the city? Well the obvious answer was to send one north to Banaba where it could help protect Filipino families from disaster.

The process took a little longer than planned, partly because the vehicle registration office in Tacloban was struck by a flood. However, in June the truck arrived safely in Banaba, where it’s now being put to good use supporting community development and disaster risk reduction projects.

These projects are all based at the Livelihood and Evacuation Centre, which is slowly but surely becoming fully operational thanks to your incredible support. Thank you so much once again for donations. More work still remains to be done, but we’ll keep fundraising right here on GlobalGiving.

We’ll also be sure to keep you posted as our work in Banaba continues, and if you ever have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email Andy@IDVolunteers.org. I would be delighted to hear from you.