Supporter: Elpido Soplantila

It is almost midnight here in Ambon, Indonesia. I’m about going to sleep but I realized that I haven’t visited the Mercy Corps Blog today. Since morning I was too busy at the office completing some work and didn't have any chance to do my everyday ritual — reading the blog.

So, late at night here, I took a few minutes to read some of the new entries. And again, I was so impressed how the Mercy Corps Blog can become a powerful medium to present our agency's work to the world.

From some recent entries, I found out that there are at least five contributors who have written on the topic of children. And I am quite interested with what Bija Gutoff has shared in her piece, "Second graders rally around Haitian classmate." It is so amazing how even very young children can express their empathy and take action to help others.

I’m proud of what Mercy Corps has done to support children in Haiti because during disasters, children are the ones who suffer most from trauma and need something to help them heal. It takes time for them to return to some sense of normalcy. And it made me think of some of the work we're doing here in Ambon, involving children in conflict-affected communities.

Our Water and Environmental Sanitation project has taught us that children in Ambon can be great champions and role models who can teach the whole community about the importance of keeping the environment clean and healthy. Mercy Corps has been working here in Ambon for more than ten years now, since the Maluku conflict divided communities along religious lines, displaced thousands of people and traumatized entire families. As in Haiti, we started with emergency response and then shifted into more long-term development programs. Water and Sanitation is now one of the major aspects of our current program here, and children are among our most helpful partners in this work.

With funding from UNICEF and Western Union, Mercy Corps helped stage a one-week event here in Ambon, called Festival Pinggir Kali, between February 8-13. Some of the things we focused on during this event were health, sanitation and environmental stewardship. Here are some pictures from the festival, which help illustrate just how involved local children are in our programs:

These young children demonstrated the importance of washing their hands with soap. They helped teach their classmates and community that clean hands will help keep them from getting preventable illnesses like diarrhea. Photo: Dany Bell/Mercy Corps

Through a coloring competition, Mercy Corps helped encourage children to love and respect their environment. Many of the poor neighborhoods in Ambon where we work are environmentally damaged, with piles of garbage and polluted streams. Photo: Dany Bell/Mercy Corps

For older children — those 7 to 9 years old — Mercy Corps sponsored a drawing competition to express their creativity. Through their drawings, children showed what they see around their neighborhood and tried to motivate neighbors to keep their environment clean and healthy. Photo: Dany Bell/Mercy Corps

All of this looks so simple, but it can be very powerful. These children have overcome the trauma of the Maluku conflict and its aftermath, but they still need our support. When we give them that support, they can thrive and become true and creative partners in our work to help neighborhoods and families.

Children in Haiti are still suffering in the aftermath of the earthquake and need our support. Together, let's help them recover and let them enjoy the world.

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It has been raining all night long; even when I heard my alarm rang at 6 a.m. sharp, the rain was still pouring outside. I couldn’t think of anything more than staying under my blanket and trying to sleep again. I wish today was the weekend but, unfortunately, it's not. So I rushed to the bathroom, preparing myself to go to the office. Then, suddenly, I realized that today is a special day for me: six years ago, on February 4, 2004, I started my very first day working with Mercy Corps Indonesia.

Mercy Corps' programs in Ambon, Indonesia are helping residents — including children — learn about ways to clean up and protect their badly-polluted urban environment. Photo: Elpido Soplantila/Mercy Corps

Time flies so fast. It feels like it was yesterday when I sat behind my desk in our office in Ambon — on my first day — wondering exactly what I was going to be doing to support people in need. But today, I feel so lucky because I made a great decision to join one of the best humanitarian organizations in the world. For some of you, that might sound a little bit too much. But I've always said that Mercy Corps is more than a workplace to me. It’s a learning institution where I have seen, learned and experienced a lot from our fascinating programs across the world.

Several hours ago, I checked this blog and was very impressed with what Roger Burks had shared in his recent entry “What I brought back from Haiti.” Can you imagine how hard the affected people from natural disasters or conflicts could start their lives again after everything has gone away? Can you imagine how children can recover from the trauma they have experienced during a disaster? These questions blow my mind. And again, I feel so lucky to be a part of Mercy Corps, helping and supporting millions of people around the world. Changing and improving their lives.

I have travelled a lot during my work with Mercy Corps, and have been deployed in several different parts of Indonesia — including during disasters such as last year's Padang Earthquake. And now, after six years, I am back to Maluku, working with a great team here to support vulnerable communities. Helping them to recover their war-torn economies through peace building activities, health programs, clean water systems and environmental sanitation approaches.

But this is not enough. There are still many people out there — and around here — crying out for help.

My work with Mercy Corps has changed me a lot. But so many people out there still need a change. A change to improve their life.

On my special day, I would like to encourage you all to grow together with Mercy Corps in helping people improve their lives, in Haiti and elsewhere; they are not victims, but survivors, and need our help.

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I started my day with a cup of tea while reading a local newspaper, Padang Ekspres, this morning. The headline for today’s edition read “70 percent of the business economy is destroyed.”

The 7.6-magnitude earthquake has affected Indonesia's West Sumatra province in so many aspects. It's not only about ruined buildings or damaged houses; not only about deaths and missing people. Besides all those losses, the economy is also falling down.

So many hotels, schools, shopping centers, markets and even companies are destroyed. So many staff died. Even though most survived, it’s not easy for them to start again.

But the worst impact of this economic problem is the suffering and burden among earthquake-affected families.

Elok, a fish farmer, saw his ponds destroyed by the earthquake and now wonders where his family's income will come from. Photo: Doddy Suparta/Mercy Corps

Elok, a 51-year-old fish farmer from Ulakan village, lost the fish ponds that generated his family income.

Basril — father of three children — once ran a small business together with his wife in order to fulfill their daily needs, but now faces the reality that the earthquake has made his family’s life worse.

The news reports that West Sumatra really needs a lot of money to recover the economy. Mercy Corps is really eager to help affected families to start generating income again but, with the current funding sources, we realize how hard it will be to meet these overwhelming needs.

But we won’t stop now. So many needs are still out there. People need to survive.

“Beyond the immediate tragedy of this disaster, lies a longer term impact on the economy, which has been severely affected. While we are working on alleviating the suffering of people made homeless, we are also looking ahead to how we can help get the markets and supply chains functioning again — and make them more resilient so they will come back more quickly from future disasters”, explained Malka Older, Mercy Corps Indonesia's Program Director, who leads the emergency response team on the ground.

Mercy Corps strongly believes that supporting people like Elok and Basril to start their livelihoods will lead all survivors to a better future.

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Today Mercy Corps has done a lot.

Starting very early in the morning, a number of staff made a run to our warehouse to pack the hygiene kits that we'd be distributing later in the day, while the procurement and logistics team procured more supplies for the next distribution. Another team did an assessment in Agam district, where hundreds of people have died and tons are still missing.

The distribution for today is quite special because two donors — USAID and ECHO — visited the affected areas in Pesisir Selatan with our emergency response team and joined us in the distribution process. I was responsible for accompanying one of the staff members from USAID Indonesia, who flew from Jakarta to Padang to see the great work that Mercy Corps is doing on the ground.

Basril's five-year-old daughter stands in the wreckage of what once once her bedroom in the village of Balai Sinayan, West Sumatra, Indonesia. Photo: Elpido Soplantila/Mercy Corps

We departed from Padang around 11 A.M. and, once again, we enjoyed views of the beautiful white sandy beaches and the green hills of the province as we drove toward our destination. But the amazing scenery was soon tempered by reality when we arrived at one of the distribution points in Balai Sinayan sub village, Pesisir Selatan district. Although this area was not as devastated compared to some places in Padang Pariaman, more than 50 families lost their houses and belongings here.

In Balai Sinayan I met Basril, a father of three children, in front of his damaged house. He told me how he was so worried when the earthquake happened. On that day, Basril and the whole family — including his 71-year-old mother —were attending a communal volleyball game in the village. From far away, he saw some houses fall down. The whole family ran back in fear to see their houses. The children were crying while he tried to enter the house, where he found that all the bedroom walls were cracked and the kitchen broken into pieces.

Now, they have to stay at his brother’s house because not a single room in their old house can be occupied anymore.

“Honestly, I don’t know how to start," Basril explained as tears fell down his face. "In the 2007 earthquake, we lost our small kiosk where we sold a few items to make family income. We hadn’t even been able to start that small business again, and now, our house is destroyed.”

I patted his shoulder for a while as we stood there quietly. When I thanked him for sharing his story, he suddenly said terima kasih which means "thank you."

Here in Balai Sinayan today, we distributed hygiene kits — soap, detergent, toothbrushes and toothpaste, women's sanitary napkins, buckets, blankets, and other household items — to Basril and 385 other families throughout the earthquake-damaged Pesisir Selatan district.

Just a few minutes before I left his house, Basril shook my hand and, again, he said terima kasih.

The hygiene kit means a lot to him.

Terima kasih means a lot to me and the team here.

And your help and support mean a lot to Basril and thousands of affected families in West Sumatra, Indonesia.

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I wasn't joking when I wrote in my previous blog post that Padang is one of my favorite holiday destinations. So it was amazing this morning as I drove with our emergency response team to Pesisir Selatan district and saw the beautiful white sandy beaches along the coast.

The three-hour trip from Padang city brought us to three different villages: Suranti, Salido and Lumpo, where our next distribution will happen tomorrow. We were joined today by a local non-governmental organization (NGO), Kogami, who has partnered with Mercy Corps’ Disaster Risk Reduction project in West Sumatra since 2008. The team arrived a day before the distribution to coordinate with the local government to make sure that the activity will go well tomorrow.

Staff from Mercy Corps and its local partner, Kogami, coordinate details with a sub-village leader in Pesisir Selatan district one day before distribution of critical supplies to earthquake-affected families. Photo: Elpido Soplantila/Mercy Corps

As we drove into the devastated areas, I again realized the enormous needs. The latest official update indicates that 740 people died in the earthquake, 343 are still missing, 412 severely injured and 2,039 slightly injured. But, unofficially, thousands of people are feared to be trapped in the rubble and the number of casualties is expected to increase.

Besides the casualties and destruction, the earthquake has devastated family livelihoods. Everyone seems unsure of what to do next and how they'll make ends meet.

Today marks a week since the 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck West Sumatra. Lots of NGOs are working hard, trying their best to address the enormous needs across this area. Tomorrow, we'll be back here, distributing hygiene kits to more than 380 families.

But the response does not stop with distribution.

With a full team of 25 staff members — mostly deployed from the field offices around Indonesia and supported by international emergency response experts — Mercy Corps has planned for a long-term program strategy to complete the emergency phase, then move quickly forward to the recovery and development phase.

We won’t stop now.

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