3. Medium Term Relief & Rehabilitation

Constructions – Temporary Shelters & Children’s Centers

In the immediate relief phase there were very few organizations on the ground (except for local informal groups which collected and distributed relief materials).  But within a month, the entire place was swarming with NGOs!  We had a series of meetings within our group to finalize our strategy.  We were already working in 97 villages spread out across the coast. We decided to slowly (but not immediately) limit our work to fewer areas in clusters where we will work for at least 5-10 years on long term rehabilitation. We also decided that since most of the NGOs that had come in now would be leaving within a year (many left much earlier), we will continue working in these village even if there are other NGOs that have come in. Many NGOs had come in with specific mandates to provide boats, nets, or construct temporary or permanent shelters. We decided that we will help the NGOs do these things and replicate their work – so that our resources can be conserved for other activities that are needed and not covered by these groups.  Our focus became a more flexible one – shifting from working on all aspects of relief to that of gap-filing and contributing in areas that others were leaving out.