Organizing and preparing to respond to a disaster

Oktovina Sari Andilolo is a Village Disaster Preparedness Facilitator in Lembang Bau village in South Sulawesi; and she came to hold this important position when she first heard about a disaster resilience initiative called DREAM.

“When I first heard about the DREAM project I was immediately interested. My neighbors and I talked about our experience with disasters in our village with staff from CWS and their local partner, Pusbinlat Motivator. In turn they shared more detailed information about climate change,” she says.

As Oktovina learned about the harm climate change is causing well beyond Lembang Bau, she decided to join a three-day program to learn more about the concept of a disaster prepared village, which the Indonesian government is promoting, plus the basics of disaster management. Topics ranged from disaster risk mapping and reduction activities, to risk mitigation and, failing that, disaster response. That includes basic First Aid, to start.

After completing the program, including practical facilitation skills training, Oktovina helped to form a Village Disaster Preparedness Team in Lembang Bau. The Team includes community members representing different groups and stakeholders in the village: women and youth, for example, plus some local government staff. Each team has a team leader, secretary and treasurer, plus sub-teams for logistics, health, shelter and field kitchen management and, if needed, evacuation.

The key Team role is complex: keep community members – their family, neighbors and friends – informed about hazardous areas; map and share evacuation routes; monitor heavy rains, when there is increased risk of landslides; and, importantly, mobilizes resources and respond during an actual emergency.

“After joining the Disaster Preparedness Team, I am much more aware of the situation in my village. Now I take time to stop and talk with neighbors and others about disaster risks in our community,” Oktovina says. Feeling confident that it is her role to share concerns around the village, Oktovina told a CWS colleague, “Now, when I need to speak at community meetings and in front of a lot of people, I feel confident to do so. I know there is still a lot more to learn about disasters and disaster management, but I am determined to keep learning to help make Lembang Bau a Disaster Prepared Village.”

If Oktovina has her way, her village and thousands of others across Indonesia will move forward from a past when they have only been victims in need of help to recover. With access to information, plus new knowledge, skills, teamwork and support from CWS and our partners, people will be more able to assess risks and anticipate harm, so they can be better prepared to reduce and mitigate harm and respond to disasters when they do happen.

A Grandmother and Village Health Volunteer team up to help a toddler grow strong and healthy

Oeun E has a passion for helping people. He’s on a mission to protect and support the next generation in his Cambodian community of Sophy. “I want to see all the children in my village grow healthy, so having better hygiene will help. I especially want all mothers and caregivers to have a good understanding good nutrition practice and basic health protective behavior,” he says.

A few years ago, E and his family were in need of support themselves. He and his wife have four teenage children, two of whom are in secondary school and two of whom have dropped out and earn money for the family with farm work. E is committed to his own hard work as a farmer, but it wasn’t enough to make ends meet. That’s why he was nominated to join a CWS-organized program.

After some information sessions and training, E began work as the Village Health Volunteer, which enables him to earn extra income while using his passion to support his community. In his role, E supports mothers and other child caregivers in Sophy to learn about child health and nutrition, and he works with Health Center staff to support young child growth monitoring every quarter during nutrition promotion and supplemental feeding sessions. For E, the educational and practical (feeding) sessions come together when he shares recipes and advice about cooking nutrient-rich porridge from local ingredients, and during hygiene lessons where moms show they know how to feed their babies in a healthy, clean environment.

One of E’s “students” is Chib San, a 62-year-old grandmother who is the primary caregiver for her 2-year-old granddaughter while the baby’s parents work in another province.

When CWS staff first met her, San said that she had heard about the nutrition education and feeding sessions, and brought her granddaughter to one because, she said, “I learned that my granddaughter was severely underweight, and learned that the Rural Development Associate would support me to bring her to the Health Center for correct diagnosis and treatment. Now I bring her to the supplementary feeding sessions so she can eat nutrient-rich porridge to keep gaining weight and grow healthy, be active and not get sick.”

San added, “It is working! I am so happy as my granddaughter is healthier, which is good. Now I don’t need to worry about borrowing money to pay for treatment when she is ill, and I can spend the $40 her parents are able to send us each month to buy healthy food instead of medicine. I am so grateful
for the support that E and both organizations, CWS and Rural Development Association, have given us.”

It takes a village to raise a child, and in this case, that means a dedicated grandmother, a Village Health Volunteer and hardworking parents.

“What I have learned…is that one should not think that someone who is different is bad.”

In July, CWS partnered with Kampus Diakonia Modern, a local foundation that supports street children in Jakarta, to bring 33 unaccompanied and separated refugee children together with 35 Indonesian children for two days of fun through sports, arts and crafts activities and cultural sharing and learning.

The Indonesian children wanted to learn how to cook traditional Somali food, play the damburaa (a traditional Somali music instrument) learn English, and hear stories. The refugee children, who are mostly from Afghanistan and Somalia, were eager to learn about paper quilling, Indonesian traditional food, how to play the angklung (a traditional Indonesian music instrument) and how to recycle bottles and fabric.

As their time together drew to a close, on Indonesia teen said, “I’m happy to be able to share stories with the refugee children I have met. What I learned during these two days is that one should not think that someone who is different is bad. We were able to respect and like each other … and even share [our very different] foods!” Another child said, “I was happy to learn about the culture of Afghanistan, and [I am so glad] the two organizations brought us closer together.”

And the refugee children? “It was great! We had so much fun with the Indonesian kids,” said one. Another stated simply, “I really hope we will have a similar opportunity in the future.”

Through partnerships with many and varied local organizations, CWS team members who focus on Protecting Urban Refugees Through Empowerment activities for children, are always looking for new and different ways to engage and encourage the 200 children in CWS care and protection. The two days with some of Jakarta’s thousands of street-living children and teens was inspiring for all CWS staff who were glad to witness the simple joy of helping break barriers and build bridges across cultures while recognizing how much all the children and teens who shared the day have in common. As ever, we are proud to stand with children in difficult circumstances, and to do what we can to uplift their spirits and hopes.

Twelve years later, a decision that changed a family’s life

If you had visited Rung Roeung 3 village in northern Cambodia a dozen years ago, you would have met a welder named Or Sereivuth and his wife Sok Yan, who earned a living by selling vegetables from her garden. Then in their mid-thirties with three children, they were struggling to make ends meet. As Yan recently told our team, “in those years we often didn’t have enough to eat!”

In 2006, Yan joined a CWS initiative where she learned about mushroom spore production. She decided to start growing mushrooms following the program. That decision, as it turns out, has turned life around for her whole family.

Now 46 and 47 and with four children between 4 and 25, Yan and Serevith are in a much better spot financially. Yan says, “from knowing nothing, I am now successfully running my mushroom business and I have shared my knowledge with my daughter and my husband – so both are helping me with the business. My family now has enough food for all year round and we have some savings, too.”

Yan took what she learned from the CWS program and added the expertise she has gained from more than a decade in the business. Now she has become a peer educator who shares her knowledge and skills with others who are starting mushroom growing businesses. She teaches others how to make compost and care for their mushroom spores for sustainable harvesting over time.

In reflecting on that life-changing decision from a decade ago, Yan says, “I now earn between $50 and $70 per week selling fresh mushrooms and my mushroom spores, and from the extra income I earn being an educator/trainer. This is so completely different from 10 years ago when my family relied mostly on my husband’s small wage from being a welder. That seems so long ago now, and I am so thankful to CWS for all the support through the years, and now using my talents and knowledge to help others learn – and get out of poverty. I am especially hopeful that others will develop the skills that enabled me to have my mushroom business so they, like me, can earn income to support their families like I help support mine.”

Incredibly hard work, creativity and a little help from their friends

Mada and Lazarus Selan are undeniably hard workers.

Selan has several different occupations, depending on the week. He harvests corn to eat at home and vegetables to sell in a local market in the part of Indonesia where the family lives. He collects tamarind in the nearby forest, mostly to sell but also to enjoy at home. He works as a wage laborer on government-funded infrastructure construction jobs. When he’s not doing one of his other jobs, he is driving his motorcycle taxi to earn extra money – especially during corn-planting season, when he doesn’t have that income to count on.

It’s heartbreaking to realize, though, that this man who works so hard only earns about a dollar a day on average. Sometimes it’s $5 each week. Sometimes it’s $11. But it’s never enough.

Mada, meanwhile, is busy managing her home-based business making and selling fried bread. Some time ago she was able to get a $17 government loan, which allowed her to start her business. She has since made enough to pay back that loan, and now she makes about $5 per week, too.

Lazarus and Mada have two children to raise, school fees to pay and other household needs to meet. Even with both of them hard at work, they often came up short. They had to do what many people in their position must: take high-interest loans to meet expenses.

Things changed in September of 2017. Through the CWS Berdaya initiative, which is supported by Week of Compassion, women in their village were starting a savings group. Mada joined eagerly. The women learned about better ways to manage household finances and expand small businesses.

Armed with her new knowledge, and never one to back down from the challenge of hard work, Mada says she “felt confident enough” to expand her food business.

Since joining the group, Mada has taken loans of about $15 a total of eight times. Each time she has paid it back with 10 percent interest. She has used each one to expand her business. In addition the fried bread she has always sold, now she makes pumpkin fries, fried bread cakes, fried bananas and fried corn. She sells from her home every day and at a nearby market once a week. Her income has more than doubled, up to about $11 each week.

“I feel that since joining the Mawar group I have learned a lot of new things and I am now able to manage my income better,” says Mada. She continued, “I can pay for my children’s school fees, and I paid off loans from the loan shark! Also, once I have some more savings, I plan to put some in a bank account.” But first, Mada has lots of ideas about improving her business even more. She says she’s glad that the savings group gives her a chance to get the other women’s reactions to her business ideas as well as their suggestions.

Incredibly hard work, creativity and a little help from some friends. That’s what it has taken for Mada and Lazarus to triple their household income up to an average of nearly $3 per day. One thing that our team noticed is that they can now afford to buy household goods that are necessities, but that they once used to consider luxuries.

This is great progress to see.

Going to the mat for her daughter’s health

CWS programs may look different from one country to the next, but from Argentina to Vietnam, there’s something that they all have in common: we get to work with some really incredible people. Ma Than Dar, 29, is one of these people.

Ma Than Dar lives in Yae Le Gyi village in Myanmar with her 35-year-old husband U Thet Naing. The couple has one daughter, Ei Ei Phyu. Life here can be far from easy. In addition to being a full-time mom and managing their household, Ma Than Dar used to work as a day laborer outside the village. U Thet Naing works as a fisherman. They were raising Ei Ei Phyu on about $35 per month of combined income.

Although they were doing their best, Ei Ei Phyu’s parents struggled to buy enough high-quality food for her in addition to paying for other household expenses. It was heartbreaking but not completely surprising, then, when a nutrition screening in 2017 showed that Ei Ei Phyu was malnourished. The screening was sponsored by CWS through a program that helps parents of young children make sure the little ones have enough nutritious food to grow up healthy.

Ma Than Dar was alarmed by this news. She immediately launched into action, joining every nutrition education session she could. She was most interested in learning about how important it is for Ei Ei Phyu to have nourishment from different food groups. She was glad to be reminded of tips for making sure she was preparing food in a healthy and sanitary way.  And after she successfully completed the workshops, she and U Thet Naing received a rooster, three hens and four different types of vegetable seeds!

She took the seeds, poultry and information and got to work. Here we are in 2018, and Ma Than Dar has 15 chickens and lots of eggs to eat or sell for extra money. She has long beans, eggplant, pumpkin and bok choy to eat. Her family has more food, and it is of higher nutritional value for them all, especially little Ei Ei Phyu. Ma Than Dar makes sure that she prepares and cooks food in a healthy way.

Each month Ei Ei Phyu’s weight increases, and she has been consistently growing.

Word spread, and her family and neighbors began to admire Ma Than Dar for the change she made happen. Recently, Ma Than Dar was elected to be one of two Mother-Leaders for her village. She joined two additional workshops that focused on growth measurement and exclusive breastfeeding. Now, she co-leads the monthly growth monitoring for all at-risk children in the village. She shares information with others about breastfeeding practices, like recommending exclusive breastfeeding for six months and then adding soft nutrition food supplements later. No tea or adult drinks and food for new babies! She also teaches other mothers and caregivers about good personal and family hygiene during monthly Self-Help Group mothers’ meetings.

Being the driven woman that she is, though, Ma Than Dar didn’t stop there. In March 2018, she was one of five mothers chosen to receive a loan of about $100 through a vote by their Self-Help Group. Ma Than Dar had a plan. As she had presented to the group, she invested the loan plus about $65 of her own savings in starting a mat-weaving business. She already had weaving skills, and she had done market research to determine the cost of materials and how much she would be able to sell her products for.

Her confidence paid off. So far, she has an average monthly income of about $48 from her mat-weaving business. That means she has more than doubled her family’s income, and she no longer needs to work as a day laborer. She has more time to stay home and care for her daughter – plus their chickens and garden!

Chickens and vegetable seeds: a great start for a young family in Timor-Leste

Like most families in their remote mountain village, Marcos Martins and Filomena do Santos focus on growing enough food to feed their families. The spouses grow enough vegetables to sell some in the nearby town in this part of Timor-Leste, Liquiçá. While this is an important income stream for them, it doesn’t earn as much as they would like it to. They make about $15 per month by selling vegetables.

Marcos and Filomena have two little girls. Local officials knew that Marcos and Filomena were struggling and wanted to make sure that they could provide enough diverse food for their daughters. They prioritized the family to be part of the CWS Timor Zero Hunger initiative.

Their Timor Zero Hunger story, like so many others, started with a hen, a rooster and information sessions on how to best care for them. Since starting to breed them earlier this year, Marcos and Filomena already have four new chicks. Their daughters are now eating eggs as part of their diet, which adds protein. Their parents sell extra eggs for a little bit of additional income, too.

Filomena says she now has a better understanding of how adding protein is an essential part of her daughters’ heath. “We usually only eat corn and cassava,” she says. With new information and “help from CWS, we are changing this. We have learned how to raise chickens in a coop, which we built ourselves. This protects them from wild animals and from thieves. They are also vaccinated so they won’t get sick and will be assets for us for some time to come,” she added.

Now that they are established in raising chickens, Marcos and Filomena are turning their attention to expanding their home gardening. They are preparing a new plot of land to add to the size of their garden. Getting access to water is a big problem for them, though.

Actually, it’s a problem for lots of people in Timor-Leste, especially during the dry season. As a result,  now isn’t a good time to plant gardens. As we wait for a better time to plant, our team is working with families here to learn about ways to grow vegetables that require less water. Then we will distribute vegetable seeds so that families can get started.

In the months and years to come, we will also be working to improve water access here. Marcos says that for now, “we get our water for drinking, cooking, bathing and watering our garden from a spring that’s about 660 feet away down a steep hill by a narrow footpath. My wife and I both collect water every day in plastic containers, which we carry back up the hill.”

One of our team members overheard another community member remark that often people don’t realize how heavy water is. Each gallon of water weighs more than eight pounds, and Marcos and Filomena both carry at least two gallons on each trip up the steep hill. In time, CWS will work the local government to investigate affordable options for better access to safe water here and in neighboring communities.

In the meantime, with CWS support and their own hard work, Marcos and Filomena will plant more nutritious vegetables to eat and to sell in the market. This will change their income enough that they will be able further to improve their lives and health. “With vegetables, eggs and chicken meat, we will have a more nutritious and diverse diet, and a bit more money.” This is a good place to start!

Making reading accessible (and fun!) in Vietnam

Our team knows that when it comes to a school’s ability to promote reading, having access to books is only the first step. Students have to WANT to read them, and parents have to want to support this habit in their children. And the students need a place to pick out books that are suited to their age and reading level.

That’s the idea behind the workshops that I help lead for teachers. These training courses are a space for teachers to learn about child-friendly school libraries as well as reading festivals. They are part of our NEW IDEA program in Vietnam, which is supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Duong Duc Trung is the Head Teacher at Muong Kim #2 primary school. The school is in Than Uyen, a rural area in northwest Vietnam. Trung recently joined one of these CWS-organized sessions that I helped lead. We were talking during a break, and he told me that this was the first time in the 10 years of his teaching and school administration career that worked in a school with a library and that he had a chance to learn about making that library child-friendly.

The sessions were led by two teachers from another CWS partner school. We relied on their knowledge and experience as a basis for the workshop, since they could help address the concerns and questions raised by participants as experienced peers.

One key part of the workshop focused on how to organize a school Reading Festival with student participation. It may sound simple, but this is actually a daunting task, especially for teachers like Trung who came from schools that are new to the program. It can be a challenge to find reading activities for both the youngest and oldest students that are fun and engaging.

Trung didn’t shy away from the challenge, though, and his school hosted the sample Reading Festival for the workshop. He told me that he was nervous and not confident ahead of time, since it was all new to him and the other teachers at the school. But with his leadership and the commitment of other teachers, they moved forward with support from the peer facilitators of the workshop.

The event was a success, to say the least. Nearly 300 students – both boys and girls – joined in the activities, which included introducing new books, painting, quizzes and games. Lots of parents came to the festival, too. Some even organized a team to compete against the teachers in a traditional game!

When the day was over, Trung and his team got lots of positive feedback. So did the workshop in general. The participating teachers shared that they appreciated the hands-on training. They are all planning to create child-friendly libraries and reading festivals at their own schools!