The Mercy Corps Blog

Blog Post Posted October 9, 2009, 9:47 am by Elpido Soplantila

Lead them to a better future

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.