In late 1999 two Singaporean nurses cried on Turkish television.
They were crying because they were witnessing the extent of the destruction from the earthquake that had struck on the 17th of August that year. They were part of a medical relief team that had gone to Turkey to provide assistance and services to the some 23,000 injured and estimated half a million homeless in the wake of the disaster. The TV report marvelled at the connection between Singapore and Turkey, how this team was from the other side of the world, but was willing to come and help, and was so moved at the plight of their fellow man. One of the nurses on camera was Ms Chan Aik Hoon, and when she returned she didn't stop helping.
After assisting in Turkey, Ms Chan and some of her other medical professional acquaintances decided that they had a need or duty to help others hit by disasters. In the year 2000, they registered Crisis Relief Society Singapore. They are a humanitarian organisation with Christian origins, and their intention is to provide disaster relief to people of all races, religions and nations.
Since their inception they have provided assistance in Afghanistan, Mongolia, Iran, Bangladesh, East Timor, and in the wake of the tsunami, in the Maldives and Sri Lanka. Their assistance has ranged from providing medical relief and supplies to food and provisions and in the case of the Maldives recently, household items such as toothpaste and stoves and pots for those people who had their entire homes washed away in December. They have a total of 260 registered volunteers, 200 of whom were involved in the tsunami relief work.
As I learned from talking to Ms Chan, there is more to disaster relief than just flying in medical supplies. "One of the first things we do is send in a recce team," she says. "The team gives encouragement to the people we are going to help, and just as importantly, will assess the situation and see what the people there need most. Then they come back and begin the process."
And the process is a lengthy one. From raising funds to organising and training volunteers to shipping the supplies, CRS has its hands full during these difficult times. The people in disaster-hit areas have no homes, no money, no food and often no way to get any. To prevent their situation from getting any worse while their homes get rebuilt, organisations like CRS give out rations including dried fish and tea leaves to families (as they did in Batticaloa) or run care centres for children (as they did in Galle) so that lives can continue.
"We go where we are needed most," says Ms Chan. "In the wake of the tsunami, lots of people were going to Aceh and Meluboh. But we realised that there were lots of other countries that needed our help.
And so we went to Sri Lanka and the Maldives."
And disaster relief can take many forms, I realised from talking to Ms Chan. For instance, after the Zarand earthquake in Iran, the CRS reconnaisance team discovered that what was needed was not emergency supplies or services, but school classrooms.
"Their school had been totally destroyed," Ms Chan tells me, "and they needed somewhere to hold lessons for the children." Education being an important aspect of any country's redevelopment, CRS went to work on it. The problem was finding an appropriate solution: Tents apparently did not work, as they were too fragile for the harsh Iranian wind and climate. Furthermore the summers were scorching, and the winters icy.
Eventually they hit upon the idea of using portacabins for classrooms. Tailor made at the factory to ventilate well in the summer and insulate in the winter, six classroom portacabins were ordered and sent to Zarand at a cost of $6, 000 each, and another twenty are in the works.
Funds are of course another important factor in relief work. It cost $23, 842 a week to keep 1703 Sri Lankan families fed, and this money has to be raised from donors. CRS keeps meticulous records of how the funds are spent, but the volunteers also have to spend a lot of time raising these funds when the disasters strike.
So now CRS is looking to move into a new phase, to do more and better work. They hope to hire some full time staff, and to be ready for action at a moment's notice, instead of preparing for each disaster on a more or less ad hoc basis. Previously they raised funds and called for volunteers as the need arose, but now they hope to have these resources at the ready instead. When I visited them, their president at the time Dr Tjan Soon Yin, said that they "want to be more professional, and provide longer term assistance" to the countries they help.
If you think you'd like to help out, keep this in mind: volunteers should have the ability to think on their feet, and solve problems in the field, be good at teamwork, and be ready for anything (you might spend a week packing lentils and tea leaves!). CRS is on the lookout for young people and is hoping to find volunteers to manage their work locally, and, in overseas crisis hit locations.
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If you are interested to donate or assist Crisis Relief Society Singapore in their work, you can contact the volunteer section at crspore@pacific.net.sg, write to them at The Administrator, Tanjong Pagar Post Office, P. O. Box 057, Singapore 910802, or visit their website www.crisisrelief.org for more details. |
