Shelter

Skat - Swiss Resource Centre and Consultancies for Development prepared the publication "After the Tsunami- Sustainable Building Guidelines for South-East Asia", which is based on Skat's longstandin

How many people are realising that there is a gathering storm of crises compounding together to create a choronic humanitarian disaster beyond our capacity to cope ?

Dear all,

I have just returned from a 4 month volunteering placement in an orphanage in Ghana. It has completely changed my life and every day I think about going back and doing more.

I have given myself a year to talk to people, fundraise and plan and then I will go back and start a project of my own. The reason I want to start my own project (rather than support those already established) is because I have seen some corruption in some of the orphanages in Ghana and so I would know where the money is going and because I feel the need to do it. I believe that I have alot to offer and I would be so happy to live in a place where people are so friendly and generous when they have so little.

I just read the advice page on cash-based responses. I would like to add one more excellent source for "further reading": Oxfam's 'Cash-Transfer Programming in Emergencies: A Practical Guide' at http://publications.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam/display.asp?searchterm=cash&isbn=0855985631

Cash-based responses in emergencies

People need money.  In an emergency, it may sometimes be quicker and more appropriate to give them money rather than things.  If they need food

Responsenet in association with Omaxe Foundation is organizing an International conference on Facilitation of Supply Chain for Diasaters and Learnings of Stakeholders for proactive scalable Collaborations on 19th March 2007, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, India

According to an article in the Independent, UK on 22 January 2007 by Alex Duval Smith in Paris:

Aid groups have suspended operations in Darfur and may pull out of the Sudanese province after a French relief worker was raped, another sexually assaulted and an Oxfam employee was severely beaten at the world's largest refugee camp.

I was in search of some study paper which has attempted to set time frame for construction of either temporary shelter or permanent shelter aftermath any disaster. I found some studies discussing the time spent in building permanent shelters after some disasters like Northbridge Earthquake, Taiwan Earthquake, Gujrat earthquake. But I could not found out any cutting lines. I know that time depends on many seen and unseen factors, context, extend of disaster, country, region etc. But working very close to the community I have realized that due to the lack of guidelines regarding time frame, unrealistic times bounds are declared/set by the Govt bodies/politician/donors and the worst affected are the affected community. As there hopes, planning are broken time and again, the poor shelter engineers are squeezed, burnt off, got frustrated and finally run away from the battle field. On the contrary, while speeding up and competing to beat the time leads to poor construction, in appropriate housings, no value of money spent and there are ample of such examples even in Sri Lanka after the Tsunami. I agree that time not the only factor for such deeds but a major contributor.

I am currently compiling a booklet (funded by Oxfam and IFRC) on the use and procurement of plastic sheeting in humanitarian relief. (www.plastic-sheeting.org for more information)

I would be especially grateful for: