Palu & Donggala Emergency Relief

Dear kind supporters,

It has been almost one year since we created this project page to appeal for help to victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Palu & Donggala (Central Sulawesi). You responded immediately and generously and with your donations (and many others outside of GlobalGiving), we were able to:

• Provide emergency water, food, health kits, blankets, etc to more than 3,000 families
• Open public kitchens providing free food for the poor and elderly (500 packages distributed daily)
• Facilitate trauma healing sessions for women and children
• Distribute 1,000 water filters and solar lamps
• Conduct health check ups for children
• Build 45 temporary housing in 2 villages

Thanks to help from around the world, YUM was able to keep helping the people in Palu & Donggala until today when many other NGOs only focused on the first months after the disaster. This sustained support has been greatly appreciated by the people we met there.

With this report, we would like to thank you once again for your generosity in our time of need, and we would like to let you know that with the finalised construction of all 45 temporary housing, we have accomplished our task of providing the necessary support after the disaster. Today, we have decided to discontinue fundraising for the project. However, we will still monitor the communities that we supported thanks to our collaboration with local NGO ForBes Indonesia.

For our recurring donors who have generously given a monthly donation to this project, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts and if you wish to continue helping our community, you may do so by donating to our projects:

Quality Education for Children in West Java

Providing Skills for Indonesian Unemployed Youth

Help Promote Good Reading Habits in Central Kalimantan

And for those interested in knowing more about Yayasan Usaha Mulia, please read our 2018 Annual Report and contact us for further information.

Once again, thank you and God bless you!

Based on the team’s evaluation, basic needs were still needed in several places. For this reason, the YUM team led by Farah Diba Agustin flew again to Sulawesi to continue its activities in the areas of Palu, Donggala and Sigi in January and April 2019.

We wanted to reach refugee populations who had received very little, if any, help and focused on thedistribution of basic necessities and post-traumatic healing actions. We went to villages that rescuers had not been able to reach because of landslides and muddy roads. What was quite incredible was that many people entrusted us with relief packs so that we could distribute to a greater number of victims; thus the number of victims assisted exceeded our projections (2500 families). In January, thanks to a donation from iAID (https://iaid.org/) we also distributed 1,000 solar lamps and water purifiers in the villages of Saloya, Amal and Kaliburu (Donggala sub-district).

Activities to help women and children to overcome the traumas of this disaster were also carried out. With children, it is mainly drawings, storytelling, relaxation. When we spot drawings that denote inner suffering, we refer these children to psychologists. In April, 178 children participated in the trauma healing sessions that included more varied activities; those sessions were conducted by a Board member of YUM – Dra. Ary Prawoto - who is a professional psychologist with years of trauma healing experience in Aceh after the tsunami. With teens, through discussion groups, we encouraged them to express themselves freely and tell us what they witnessed; this is usually followed by a relaxation exercise and yoga session to manage stress.

During our first mission, we had spotted the villages that we have been assisting in a continuous and regular way. There are, for example, two very special places: Saloya and Amal. The members of these two communities were expelled and had to re-establish a new camp 3 times, the last being in the middle of the forest. Thanks to a generous donation from GlobalGiving, the construction of 45 housing units, a public kitchen and a sanitation building were started in January 2019 in the village of Amal (Donggala sub-district). Because of heavy rains in February and March, the houses were not yet completed by the time we returned in April, but good progress had been made. YUM is also working with local NGOs to build 70 temporary shelters in the Sirenja Donggala area.

Links:

• News Article about housing (in Bahasa Indonesia)
• News Article on YUM's work in Sulawesi (in Bahasa Indonesia)

Our third visit to Palu and Donggala happened on November 20th for a duration of one week. The main focus was still to distribute basic necessities, such as food, water, hygiene equipment, clothing and educational materials for children. We were also able to purchase three (3) electricity generators for communities who were still living without electricity.

Our team observed that most aid agencies have left Palu. Only a few are still active and the assistance is incidental.

The villages visited by the YUM team were:

• Biromaru: The refugees are scattered in several points of evacuation in conditions that are quite alarming. The team organized a trauma healing session for children including entertainment programs, singing together, and shared snacks. Some 200 children were involved in this activity.

• Tanjung Padang: Coinciding with the commemoration of Mother’s Day in Indonesia, this trip also focused on providing assistance to mothers and women such as giving out basic personal hygiene kits as well as bread and 150 aid packages.

• Sirenja: During this trip, we checked on the construction of temporary shelters, for which YUM donated approximately $1,000. The construction plan targets 70 units of 5 x 5 meters in size, with wood frame, zinc roofing and fibre cement walls. Furthermore, these shelters can function as kitchens or tradestalls.

• Amal: During our visit, we realised that very little assistance had so far been given to refugees because the village is located in a remote area; this tribal community was badly hit by landslides.The team provided assistance in the form of towels, underwear and local snacks for adults and children. The number of refugees there is 86 from 24 families.

• Saloya: We visited the Saloya shelter for a third time. Refugees in this shelter have made efforts to improve the quality of their life; they established an emergency school tent, measures to ensure hygiene are taken and the blankets that had previously been distributed by our team have been washed regularly. The community was welcoming and friendly and ready to cooperate. At this shelter, the team also held activities with the children.

• Kaliburu: Kaliburu is a shelter that was identified by the local team as having received minimal assistance so far. Because going there by car is not possible, the team brought assistance to the farthest point that can be accessed and the community picked up the relief goods using a motorcycle.

Our team also reported that temporary shelters are needed as soon as possible given the health of the refugees and the frustation that can result from living in camps for long periods of time. The government has so far only planned to build 12,000 houses out of 86,000 severely damaged, while temporary shelters provided by aid agencies are categorized as uninhabitable (the same happened in Aceh some years ago).

Thank you once again for your generous support to this much needed project!

After the first visit to Palu and Donggala at the end of October, it was obvious that a second visit  needed to happen quickly as emergency relief was very much needed, especially in certain areas that were hard to reach and also for minority communities that were not receiving any aid (or very little).

That is why, on November 12th, the YUM team, headed by board member Farah Diba Agustin, once again flew to Palu with stocks of food, water, medicine and health equipment from Jakarta. This time though we were also coming with supplies that were specifically requested by those we had met on our first visit such as undergarments, hygiene products and educational materials for children.

During the 5-day trip to Palu and Donggala, the team focused on several activities:

1. Distribution of emergency relief
2. Trauma healing activities
3. Setting up public food stalls offering food at a very low cost (free for the elderly) 

All in all, in just two visits to Palu and Donggala, the YUM team were able to distribute relief packages to more than 2,500 families living in various locations that were heavily hit by the earthquake and tsunami. Mostly, the aid went to several villages in the regency of Donggala and Sigi. Because of the close collaboration that YUM has with the Regent of Donggala, we were able to access areas that were not receiving enough aid for the whole community. On this visit, we were lucky enough to have been offered a helicopter carrier for supplies and 2 electricity generators to be sent to the sub-district of Lindu in Sigi where access to the villages remain impossible to this day due to landslides and destroyed roads leading to this area. Thankfully we were able to send supplies to more than 1,100 families via helicopter.

Currently the YUM team has just left for our 3rd visit to Palu & Donggala. Our efforts remain committed to the communities who have not received help or very little help. Our wish for 2019 is to be able to find funding to build temporary housing for a minimum of 20 families. Each house costs approximately $650. If you or your friends and family are interested to provide housing, it would be a real blessing for the families there!

The Palu & Donggala Relief project was initiated by Yayasan Usaha Mulia's board member, Mrs. Farah Diba Agustin, who felt compelled to help the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami and volunteered to go herself to Palu and Donggala. After setting up a team of 5 people and receiving an initial funding of $5,000 from friends and organisations around the world (Susila Dharma organisations and individual donors), the team started collecting data on where the assistance was most needed. The team also started purchasing basic necessities and medicines for the disaster victims. Thanks to Mrs. Agustin's close connections with the local government, many of the boxes of supplies were sent in military planes straight to Palu.

On the first day of the team's arrival, they visited several of the affected areas. One of these is the neighborhood of Balaroa where some 1,747 houses were swallowed up when the earthquake caused the soil to liquefy in an area of 47.8 hectares. Another affected area is Talise Beach where the tsunami of 2.5 meters struck the area during the annual Palu Nomoni festival. That evening, the team together with local volunteers started preparing the food packages that were to be distributed to different villages during their 6-day trip.

Altogether, the team visited 7 shelters and distributed close to 1,000 aid packages comprising ready-to-eat nutritious food, rice, water, medicine and basic health equipment. Whenever possible, the team also spent time with the community, especially the children, to help with simple trauma healing activities.

Thanks to GlobalGiving's generous donation, we have received funding to continue distributing basic needs for the next two months. However, your help is still very much needed! The aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami will affect these people for many more months to come, possibly years. Besides basic needs, they will need trauma healing sessions and that is where your help is most needed. Hopefully we can count on you to continue supporting the people of Palu & Donggala.