Long-term Resilience Building in Dominica

The IsraAID team is now assessing how to assist the island in its longer-term recovery.

Six months after Hurricane Maria, more than 100,000 people still lack electricity, 60,000 homes remain damaged and many people have no access to safe water. During the hurricane, 1.2 billion trees were destroyed, including 18 million coffee trees, and 80% of the island’s agriculture was damaged. It could take up to ten years for the coffee trees to begin to regrow.

Together with local partners, IsraAID has focused on the south-east of the island, notably Barrio Real, one of the communities hardest hit by the hurricane.

Our activities

Water, sanitation and hygiene

IsraAID has partnered with the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico and the community of Barrio Real to build a new gravitational sand filtration system, ensuring safe drinking water that does not require electricity. Barrio Real has been without electricity since Hurricane Maria, and the community’s only safe water source was an electric well. Construction is scheduled to begin soon.

Mental health support

IsraAID has collaborated with the Jewish community of Puerto Rico to strengthen community resilience and help develop sustainable responses to trauma and crises. This includes self-care workshops, psychological first aid training and group activities, like expressive arts.

Our team has conducted professional development workshops with PhD Psychology students at Ponce University, teaching them how to use expressive therapy tools, such as art and drama therapy.

IsraAID’s mental health professionals have also been running support workshops for local professionals from ASPIRA, an organization providing educational support for vulnerable students from low income backgrounds. Since the hurricane, ASPIRA have noticed an increase in their students’ challenging behavior. IsraAID’s team is training ASPIRA staff in how to help their students build personal resilience.

Case Study

Doña Chefa is 88 years old. She’s a mother of four and grandmother of 30! She has lived in the small, rural community of Barrio Real, in the mountains of Puerto Rico, all her life. The nearest doctor is a 30-minute drive away and the nearest shops are a 30-minute walk up the mountain.

Hurricane Maria devastated Barrio Real. Almost every roof was blown away, and many homes were flooded. Worse still, the hurricane had damaged the community's electric well - its only supply of safe drinking water. Doña Chefa had to wait for seven days to get bottled water. In the meantime, she was forced to drink water from the river, even though she knew it was unsafe.

Six months later, the residents of Barrio Real are still without electricity, and their well is still damaged and unable to run.

IsraAID’s team in Puerto Rico has provided water filters to Barrio Real, allowing the community to have potable water. To reach a lasting, sustainable solution to this problem, IsraAID has partnered with the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico to build a new gravitational sand filtration system. When it is built, Doña Chefa and her whole community will have safe drinking water without the need for electricity.

More updates to follow! Thank you for your support!

IsraAID’s Emergency Response Team has been on the island of Puerto Rico since 27th September, following Hurricane Maria’s devastation. The team continues to provide emergency relief, and is now planning and implementing longer-term and sustainable solutions.

The team’s ongoing assessment identified that many communities are still in need of:

• Access to safe water; in addition to immediate needs, several communities also need sustainable, long-term access to safe water sources.
• Post-trauma mental health support for local professionals who are working directly with the hurricane-affected communities, specifically first-responders, students, faculty staff members, social workers and other mental health workers.

Locations: Together with various local partners, IsraAID continues to focus on the south-east of the island, where Hurricane Maria initially struck and where the destruction was greatest.

Activities:

Water, sanitation and hygiene:

1. Distribution of water filters

IsraAID’s water team continued to distribute water filters in six remote communities, impacting over 6,000 people. Each filter can provide safe water to approximately 25 people. The distribution was conducted in collaboration with students from the Humacao branch of the University of Puerto Rico, who helped ensure that the filters were assembled, installed and used correctly. The students will continue to monitor the communities to test the water quality and ensure the filters are being used appropriately. IsraAID’s water engineer also ran hygiene awareness seminars to equip the community with knowledge about safe hygiene practices.

2. Long-term water system

IsraAID’s water engineers visited several remote communities which are not supplied with water by the island’s national water provider, to identify those most in need. They consulted with the water system’s local operators, usually elder members of the community, and investigated the water sources to plan construction of a new sustainable system. The water engineer mapped out a proposal to construct a large-scale water system for various, local communities.

Medical Services:

The team set up six pop-up clinics and made multiple home visits, in nine different areas across some of the deprived communities in Puerto Rico. The team visited Adjuntas, Humacao, San Juan, Anon, Catano, Barrio Obrero, Barrio Real, as well as various locations in the island Vieques, to the South East of Puerto Rico’s main island.

Mental Health Support:

The team continues to work with local organisations and communities, running mental health support workshops for local professionals. The psychosocial team provided an introductory “Psycho-social First Aid and Self-care” workshop to local first responders, as well as several sessions on self-care to staff of a local NGO, APNI. APNI works with parents of children with disabilities, and following Hurricane Maria, with isolated communities which lack access to the mental health facilities in the island’s centre. In addition, the IsraAID team facilitated three workshops in two hospitals, strengthening local service providers’ capacity (nurses and mental health workers) in responding to trauma. The team used expressive arts participatory methodologies.

Case Study: The local operator of the community water system in Barrio Real, Porfirio Fraticelli said to IsraAID’s water engineer; “It is really great working with you! You have excellent technical knowledge of our water systems and the long-term solutions for our community.”

Next Steps:

1. The team is in the final stages of planning a large-scale water purification system for a small, remote neighbourhood called Barrio Real, near Patillas in the southeast of the country, which is not connected to the national water system. The national water provider provides for 97% of the island, leaving 3% to find community-driven solutions. The IsraAID water engineer will implement the water system in one neighbourhood and then hopes to replicate it in another community nearby - Quebrada Arriba.

2. IsraAID’s water engineering team will continue to work with students from the University of Puerto Rico – Humacao, and train them on how to use and assemble water filters in communities which do not have access to safe drinking water.

3. Our mental health support team will continue to work with local universities, hospitals and non-governmental organisations to train professionals on how to deal with trauma, post-trauma, self-care and recognising signs of stress. To ensure sustainability, IsraAID is providing workshops and supervision for relevant university students, to help them transfer psycho-social knowledge and tools to their own communities. In January, the team will begin a six-month partnership with Ponce University, providing theoretical and practical Disaster Risk Reduction tools and knowledge to PHD students from the Department of Clinical Psychology.

More updates to follow!