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Second
Anniversary Update
UUSC tsunami relief factsheet (PDF)
IN THE NEWS
VISUALS
SURVIVAL STORIES
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How your relief donations are being
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Humanitarian aid is directed to marginalized, neglected and politically oppressed communities UUSC has to date received over 2 million dollars in tsunami relief donations! We greatly appreciate your generosity. The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee is committed to helping to address the immediate dangers faced by survivors of the earthquake and tsunami, as well as helping restore livelihoods they have lost.
Marginalized communities in all areas have been particularly devastated and we are working to help them regain their livelihoods. In addition to fishing communities, we are providing aid to landless farm workers and to groups that offer job training, women's empowerment, trauma counseling, alternative employment skills, and human rights education. The Service Committee is continuing to assess reports from the region and is committed to providing long-term relief and rehabilitation to where we can be most effective in helping poor and marginalized populations to rebuild their shattered lives. Organizations receiving relief aid UUSC has awarded relief grants to UUSC partners and UUA Holdeen partners in India, and UUSC partners in Indonesia and on the Burma-Thailand border area. Indonesia UUSC funds are supporting the following four members of the Humanitarian Solidarity Coalition for Natural Disaster in Aceh and North Sumatra: SINTESA, a local government organization; Federation of Independent Farmers' Unions, a coalition of peasants and fisherfolk; PERMATA, an independent peasants' union with 66 village-level groups; YBA, a local nongovernmental organization.
Sri Lanka UUSC is supporting the Sewalanka Foundation, which is working with grassroots groups to encourage broad social participation in the reconstruction efforts. The foundation’s approach is designed to enable the affected populations to be directly involved in their own development. As an organization working with ethnically diverse communities in north and east Sri Lanka, Sewalanka promotes inter- and intracommunity collective social action as a means for reconciliation. UUSC is supporting the foundation’s work on livelihood reconstruction for Tamil, Muslim, and Sinhalese families, with a focus on single-parent households. Activities include:
India Safai Karamchari Andolan, based in Tamil Nadu, India, works to liberate and rehabilitate manual scavengers from their caste-based hereditary and inhumane work. In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, scavengers from all districts in the state of Tamil Nadu were roused from their beds and taken by trucks to the tsunami-affected areas to clear debris and bodies in the affected areas. They were not given time to even pick up a change of clothing. Nor were they provided safety measures such as masks, gloves or provided water soap or disinfectant after carrying out the unsanitary work. The scavengers were forced to beg for relief food. In spite of the vital work they did they were not provided with allowances or wages for doing the work. Instead, they were provided with cheap liquor before beginning work to enable them to manually handle the decay and decomposition without being overcome from the stench and rot. UUSC provided funds to compensate the scavengers for their work. Sahanivasa promotes community-based initiatives for severely oppressed Dalit laborers, women and farmers, and works with them to launch struggles for the protection and promotion of their human, political and socioeconomic rights. Chennaiah, the founder of this organization, is also the national coordinator of the National Alliance of People's Movements and the Andhra Pradesh Agricultural laborers and Marginalized Farmers Unions. He has toured the entire coastal regions of Andhra Pradesh and reports the victims are 99 percent from the fisher community. Funds will be provided for emergency relief and livelihood rehabilitation in eight villages of Nellore District in conjunction with the fish workers' unions. Sahanivasa has already promoted community-based village-level associations of fisherfolk in all the villages. The village leaders are collectively involved in both relief and rehabilitation processes. Sahanivasa reports that just a relatively few dollars can go a long way to restoring the livelihoods to the fishing communities in the affected area of Adhra Pradesh. According to Sahanivasa, the approximate cost of each fiber boat is $1,144; each mechanized boat, $458; each catamaran, $229; each general net, $275; and the estimated cost to rebuild each house destroyed, $458. |
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