The Philippines, One Year On from Typhoon Haiyan
(TRAVPR.COM) UK - November 10th, 2014 - Local Social Enterprise Support Philippines Typhoon Victims
8th November marks the one-year anniversary that the devastating typhoon Haiyan tore through the Philippines killing more than 7000 people and displacing millions.
For many people this is now a distant memory but for the team at Manchester-based volunteer abroad organisation, Kaya Responsible Travel, however, typhoon Haiyan isn’t easily forgotten.
Kaya has been sending international volunteers to Tacloban, the worst affected city by the typhoon, since 2008.
When the typhoon struck one year ago, the small team at Kaya had to jump into action quickly. They tirelessly worked long hours to raise funds and recruit volunteers to help rebuild the shattered city. “The initial weeks following the typhoon were extremely tough for everyone in the office” remarked Katie, a Placement Advisor for Kaya, “we had to deal with hundreds of enquiries from people who wanted to help and all of us worked hours and hours of overtime to keep up with everything.”
Their hard work paid off as their efforts helped Kaya to raise over £10,000 in under 6 months to help those in desperate need in Tacloban.
Kaya placed 38 volunteers in Tacloban within the first 4 weeks following the typhoon. These volunteers helped with the initial disaster relief mission, which, over the next few months helped bring food, medical supplies and shelter to almost 850 families.
In 2014, Kaya has placed another 89 volunteers in Tacloban to help with a variety of on-going projects to provide long-term support to the local communities and help them down the long road to recovery:
- A nutrition programme has helped to feed 120 malnourished children and volunteers have also helped to run nutrition and hygiene workshops to help educate people about how to stay healthy and stop the spread of disease.
- A building project which has helped to build homes for 10 local families who lost everything and also a classroom for over 50 children who were previously being taught in a makeshift tent. Katie even roped in her brother-in-law, Michael Rushton (another ex-Nelson Thomlinson student), to help with the building. He spent 3 weeks in February helping to build a family home.
- Volunteers also provided much needed teaching support in schools, most of which had to be set up in make-shift tents in the months following the typhoon as the classrooms were damaged and unsafe.
- Experienced medical volunteers helped both urban and rural clinics and hospitals to bring much needed help to the local staff who were struggling to cope with the sheer amount of people who needed medical attention. Many volunteers also brought with them medical supplies such as bandages and medication, which were in desperately short supply.
- Volunteers with media and photography backgrounds were also able to help raise awareness of the situation in Tacloban and the way that volunteers were working to help support the communities.
One year on, much progress has been made in Tacloban and people are slowly starting to rebuild their lives. “The last year has been an amazing year of improvement for Tacloban.” explains Mira, who works as a Placement Manager at Kaya, “to watch the city start to take shape again and to see the locals continue to smile their way through this tragedy has been an inspirational experience. We look forward to supporting Tacloban for many years to come and to seeing the amazing achievements of our volunteers and the impact that they have on local life. There’s still a long way to go and it will take Tacloban many years to fully recover but we’ll be there every step of the way.”
Mira and Katie along with the rest of the Kaya team are still working hard to recruit as many volunteers as possible to help with the long-term support of the community. “Thankfully even a year after the typhoon there are still lots of people who want to help and all our projects are fully booked until the end of the year” explains Katie, “but we need as much support as possible so are encouraging anyone who’s interested in helping to contact us and find out more.”
For anyone interested in helping, all Kaya’s projects can be viewed here: http://www.kayavolunteer.com/destinations/country/Philippines
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