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Following a natural disaster, it can take too long to help those who have been made homeless to attain permanent shelter. This project will enable us to reduce our response times drastically, thereby saving lives and enabling those made homeless to recover self-sufficiency months sooner than is currently possible.
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After a natural disaster, aid agencies will tend to provide for the immediate material needs of those affected through tents, clean water, food, clothing and bedding, and other means. However, moving from dealing with immediate post disaster needs (the role of the aid agencies) to post-disaster independence (often assisted through development agencies) can take time. The more time it takes, the greater the human cost (through sickness and disease, lack of means, etc), and indirectly the greater the economic cost to the country affected. Habitat for Humanity is a specialised home construction NGO working internationally in over 90 countries. We have been enabling people living in poverty to have access to homes since our founding in 1976. Most usually, we work in non-disaster situations – however, we became actively involved in post-disaster reconstruction following the Tsunami of S E Asia in December 2004. Since then, we have been involved in the post-disaster reconstruction of homes after many recent high profile disasters including the the Pakistan earthquake, Hurricane Katrina in the US, flooding and mudslides in Guatemala, the aftermath of Cyclone Sidr in Bangladesh, and post earthquake reconstruction in Indonesia and China. Over this time, we have developed considerable expertise of the issues involved in post-disaster reconstruction. The basis of this project is to create post disaster reconstruction plans for 12 countries with predictable natural disasters, so that when disaster strikes, rebuilding of homes can take place very quickly and efficiently (and in some cases, cut out the need for transitional shelter altogether, moving straight from tents to permanent core housing). We are seeking a total of £100k to run a pilot for one country; expansion costs for up to 11 further countries will, we believe, be met from governmental and trust/foundation sources, with one source already having shown interest. Full paper available on request.