CWS assisting one million people in Myanmar, now shifting focus to farm recovery and food security

Relief Web

June 23, 2008, BANGKOK/WASHINGTON -- Global humanitarian agency Church World Service (CWS) reports that as of today, it has provided temporary shelter and fresh water supplies sufficient for nearly one million Myanmar (Burma) cyclone survivors.

As of Thursday (June 19), the Church World Service team based in Bangkok reported that with its local partners in Myanmar, it had reached a total of 572 villages in the disaster-affected region and had provided supplies sufficient to serve more than 980,000 beneficiaries and had delivered 3,944 "water baskets." The water baskets, which capture rainwater, alone deliver the potential for 986,000 people to have clean drinking water. Each of the portable, lightweight plastic water containers holds the equivalent of a day's clean drinking water for 250 people.

CWS says its local partners have also provided temporary shelter plastic tarpaulins for 41,374 households--more than 25 percent of the total number of households (160,000) the United Nations has estimated to have received emergency tarps so far.*

CWS says its fellow international non-governmental organization members of the Action by Churches Together (ACT) alliance have also provided food and other non-food supplies to survivors in the target communities served by the local partners as well.

Church World Service further reports that it is continuing its U.S. fundraising campaign for Cyclone Nargis survivors and is now shifting to farm recovery and rehabilitation in the devastated Irrawaddy Delta area, with focus on immediate agricultural assistance to ensure next season's crops and to build future food security.

"As with our recovery work following the 2004 tsunami, our model of 'disaster relief' is really about building disaster risk reduction components into any of our emergency recovery and rehabilitation programs," says CWS Emergency Response Program Director Donna Derr. "We're turning our attention in Myanmar to that kind of holistic recovery now."

Farmers in the area have till the end of July to recover their fields and paddies and get rice seed in the ground for next season's crops.

Concentrating on some 11 townships in the delta already being assisted, CWS and its local partners plan to provide farmers with farmland needed rice seed stock, field preparation tools, and equipment to compensate for the significant numbers of work animals--buffalo and oxen normally used for tilling--that were lost in the cyclone. Additionally, CWS intends to provide capitol for hiring laborers from among those families who don't own farmland and need income.

"Because our philosophy is to work through local organizations--which helps people at grassroots levels build greater self-sufficiency and resiliency," says Derr, "with adequate support, CWS will be able to continue serving the Burmese people."

Cyclone Nargis cut a huge swath of destruction about 100 miles wide across 200 miles of the populous Irrawaddy Delta, killing an estimated 100,000 people or more, as well as livestock, and destroying homes, crops and property. Estimates say over two million people were affected.

Contributions to the Church World Service Cyclone Nargis response may be made by telephone at (800) 297-1516; by mailing a check to Church World Service, P.O. Box 968, Elkhart, IN 46515; or through a secure online contribution at: www.myanmarrecovery.org

* Bloomberg News, June 17, 2008, "Myanmar Cyclone Survivors Left Without Shelter, Aid Workers Say," http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHYSzGpbAPlw&refer=home

Media Contacts:

Lesley Crosson,
CWS/New York,
212-870-2676;
lcrosson@churchworldservice.org

Jan Dragin,
781-925-1526;
jdragin@gis.net