Recovery Toolkits

Claw hammers, crow bars, saws, dust pans and other tools provided by Mercy Corps are helping earthquake survivors implement clean-up plans. Photo: Mercy Corps

Yogyakarta, Indonesia — It's been approximately one month since a devastating earthquake shattered Central Java. People in the most affected district, Bantul, still labor and toil to pick up pieces of wood, glass, and iron. Some are still cleaning their former houses utilizing any available tool. One look at the scene and it's clear that these villagers want to clean their communities and rebuild their homes — and they're more than willing to work to do it.

Members of every Indonesian community, young and old, men and women do not hesitate to work together to help their neighbors. This principle of collaboration is known as gotong royong in Indonesian - which simply means working together - and it's commonly applied by communities when facing any situation that requires a collaborative effort or response. It supports quick physical reconstruction and social revitalization, while strengthening psychological ties with neighbors.

Many villages have initiated clean-up work by forming gotong royong groups to speed up the cleaning process. Each group in the village observes a cleaning schedule established among the community members. Despite the enthusiasm, however, the recovery process was initially slowed by the lack of proper construction tools and equipment.

Mercy Corps responded by delivering recovery kits, helping the people of Bantul implement their own recovery strategy. Included in a recovery kit are construction tools such as: shovels, wheelbarrows, hoes, claw hammers, crow bars, saws, dust pans and some protective equipment such as masks and gloves.

Gandung, a village emergency coordinator from Pungkuran village in the Pleret sub-district of Bantul, is thankful for the tools. He says the clean-up schedule can now begin in earnest. The most-needed tool in the kit that Gandung and his community received was a big hammer. Having only two hammers previously, Gadung says, "slowed down the cleaning process significantly. It is now easier to mobilize our resources - manpower and time - to work together and clean our neighborhood."

Praise for the Kits

Residents of Bantul work to remove pieces of their former homes. Photo: Mercy Corps

The recovery kits are directly distributed to previously formed groups of household. One kit is utilized by a group that usually consists of three to four households.

Maryanto, a 19-year-old resident of Cangkring village, says, "These tools are very useful for everyone in our community because for a few days now, my brother and I could only collect and threw debris away piece by piece; but now, that we have a wheelbarrow that Mercy Corps gave, the cleaning process becomes much faster."

Consistently, Mercy Corps and its local partner organization monitor the distributions one or two days afterwards. The monitoring is held to learn how the tools benefit communities.

A community leader in the Pleret sub-district, 38-year-old Mujadi, says there are 175 destroyed houses in his neighborhood, so they've been eagerly waiting for these tools.

"Every neighborhood unit leader has coordinated the cleaning phase, but it's been a difficult process because tools are limited. The government has only allocated the whole community two pieces of tools: a hoe and a shovel. In addition, private aid has been limited."

"The recovery tools distributed by Mercy Corps," he adds, "are very useful and gave a second chance to follow through on our recovery plan."

You can help support earthquake survivors by purchasing either the Java Earthquake Survival Kit or the Earthquake Recovery Kit, each of which help provide the tools for Bantul residents to rebuild their homes and communities.