1 August 2008

The British Red Cross has finished its tsunami recovery programme in Indonesia, building more than 2,200 earthquake resistant homes and helping around 11,300 survivors rebuild their livelihoods.

Working closely with the Indonesia Red Cross, the British Red Cross provided support through cash grants to individuals, groups and communities affected by the tsunami. Additional support to particularly vulnerable people such as orphans, the elderly and single parents was also provided. In two and a half years, over £5m was given out in cash grants.

The Red Cross also helped people prepare for future disasters through a range of activities including setting up action teams, made up of members of the community, in 17 villages to work on contingency planning and preparing for future disasters. Activities carried out by these teams include identifying risks and tsunami evacuation routes, training in search and rescue, and raising awareness about preparing for disasters using innovative methods such as drama.

Dave Mather, head of the recovery programme, said: "Such a terrible disaster becomes something people just tuck away and don't want to think about. But if you can help them think about those things, and talk about what happened, they will be better prepared for future disasters."

Housing reconstruction programme

People were offered a choice of three house types – timber, concrete and a composite – based on a standard Indonesian three-room house design. The houses were designed in accordance with the new Indonesian building codes for seismic, wind and surge tide resistance defined following the tsunami to improve resistance to collapse during natural disasters, allowing occupants to evacuate safely. 

Nigel Ede, programme adviser, said: "There were lots of challenges early on – the debris had to be cleared, we had to establish who the land belonged to and then we helped people get legal land titles, which they'd never had before. In the first two years we only completed 284 houses, but all the groundwork had been done.

"By 2007 the programme was in full flow. We started building in Teunom, one of the worst-hit coastal areas of Aceh, and we built nearly 2,000 houses in a year. At times building was going on 24 hours a day. Everywhere you looked were the red roofs of Red Cross houses going up and the thrill of being part of that process was infectious."

Livelihoods programme

Over 9,600 individual cash grants were given out to help people re-establish traditional livelihoods in areas such as livestock and agriculture, as well as to set up new businesses like cake making, tailoring and even hiring out wedding equipment. There were also around 150 group grants, which were used to bring groups of up to twenty people together to invest in assets such as a boat for fishing or fencing to establish agricultural land.

Everyone who was given a cash grant received training to help sustain and grow their business. The Red Cross linked people up with different organisations to deliver the relevant training, such as learning basic veterinary skills for understanding and treating livestock problems.

Preparing for disasters

Besides setting up community action teams, the Red Cross implemented numerous activities to prepare for disasters, including skills training in the principles of safe housing and the construction of community buildings in 17 villages so that people could put these skills into practice, coastal plantation projects, and community grants to develop infrastructure such as drainage channels, evacuation routes and tidal gates – projects which will all help in reducing peoples' vulnerability to potential future natural disasters.

Indonesia Red Cross

Even before the tsunami, Teunom was a traumatised community, after three decades of hostilities between the Jakarta government and GAM, a group seeking Acehnese independence.

Nigel said: "It was a stressful and tense environment with huge potential problems but we managed to finish on time and within budget and complete everything without any major issues. This was done by talking to local communities on a daily basis.

"The strength of the programme was the Indonesian Red Cross volunteers working with us. They were the interface between the programme and the local people as they actually lived in the villages, which meant communities were kept informed about the progress of our programme and people could raise questions early and get answers easily."

More about building new homes

More about livelihoods

More about preparing for disasters