Veteran Aid Worker Says Agency Expertise will Bolster Rebuilding Effort

Nick Macdonald, one of the first humanitarian workers on the ground in Sri Lanka after last December's Indian Ocean tsunami, is among a team of veteran disaster responders that Mercy Corps is assembling in Louisiana.

Macdonald says the agency is applying some lessons learned from the tsunami response. “This is the kind of thing we deal with a lot overseas, but we’re not used to dealing with it here,” he says. Before leaving on his assignment, he shared his thoughts on Hurricane Katrina and how Mercy Corps might help restore lives and livelihoods in the embattled region.

What was your role in Mercy Corps’ response to the Asian tsunami?
I was one of the first humanitarian workers to arrive on Sri Lanka’s eastern coast, in Trincomalee, after the tsunami struck. In the first few days, we delivered clean water and shelter materials and emergency supplies, and we helped alleviate inundated sewage systems that posed a threat to public health. We moved rapidly to economic recovery, getting people back to their homes and to their livelihoods.

How might this response compare to that one?
One obvious difference is that we have a very effective emergency response system here in the U.S., in terms of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Guard, who will do some of the work restoring the infrastructure that Mercy Corps and other international NGOs were responsible for in Sri Lanka.

But I anticipate one similarity will be that we will look for ways to help people regain their livelihoods, especially those who don’t have the resources to sustain a hit like this and bounce back on their own. Our goal here is also the same as in the tsunami: We want to get people back to their homes and their everyday lives as soon as possible.

How will you assess Mercy Corps’ role in the relief and recovery effort?
The first thing I’ll do is listen to people: talk with the people affected, talk with the people responding, and determine how Mercy Corps can add value to their efforts. It’s also important that we coordinate with other agencies and complement each other and add value.

What might Mercy Corps’ response entail?
Our expertise is in helping people return to their homes and restart their livelihoods. If there’s a long, protracted displacement, we’ll focus on where people are and how we can support them in those environments. Once they return, we want to work alongside populations whose losses aren’t covered by insurance to restore the productive assets they’ve lost. Mercy Corps is adept at helping small entrepreneurs who have lost something integral to their ability to earn a living get back on their feet. In post-tsunami Sri Lanka, the losses were boats and fishing equipment. I suspect in this case it will be more complex and varied. But in the end, the goal is the same: to restore the economic livelihoods of disaster survivors.