CALD Secretariat conducts Post-Typhoon Haiyan Mission Trip

Waves calm, silent skies, stare out to the distance and see what lies. Look around, lo and behold, a story is brewing awaiting to be told…

After more than 2 months since the exceptionally powerful 300km/hour Philippine typhoon record-holder, Typhoon Haiyan, stormed its way into the Philippines, the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats, lead by CALD Secretary General Neric Acosta, together with the members of the Office of the Presidential Adviser for Environmental Protection (OPAEP), the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA), the Philippine Climate Change Commission, the Philippine Medical Association, the Philippine Disaster Recovery Foundation, Feed the Hungry Minds, Environmental Science for Social Change, and PTT Philippine Corporation, left Manila in a C130 last Thursday morning, 30 January 2014, for a mission trip to Leyte Province.

Full with truck-loads of boxes of donations from international and local partners and donors, the 30-member delegation arrived noontime in Tacloban and immediately traveled across the province of Leyte to: (1) conduct site visits; (2) area assessments for education and livelihood programs; (3) dialogue with residents; and (4) meetings and consultations with local officials. The team visited the towns of Tabon-Tabon, Julita, La Paz and Mayorga and was welcomed by the respective Municipality Mayors.

Based on the feedback the delegation received, areas have similar major concerns, top priorities and needs: livable shelter and construction materials most especially roofing, reconstruction of classrooms and sources of school supplies, medicine for children and women, and alternative livelihood programs. Citizens also need counseling and therapy in order to recover from severe trauma brought about by Haiyan.

According to the team’s situational analysis, the overall devastation in Leyte, not only in Tacloban, is still beyond compare. Empirical evidence will also show, noting and fully aware of the present pace of the redevelopment efforts undertaken by institutions, that the recovery and rebuilding process would take years for the entire area to reach back to tip-top shape. With Typhoon Haiyan topping as one of the deadliest Philippine typhoon on record, and the strongest Philippine tropical cyclone in 2013, it has brought unimaginable destruction, and the government, both in the local, regional and national level faces a great challenge in this critical period of rebuilding innocent human lives and all that was lost.

Although Leyte paints a sad picture – a landscape of a wrecked airport, hectares of (now unproductive) land with headless coconut trees and trunks and posts toppled over everywhere, destroyed homes, closed businesses, and piles of scrap still lying on the streets with hundreds of climate change refugee tents, notably, children are still playing and laughing and people are meeting and living with one smile after the other. An inspiring sense of hope still lives on and fills the air.

CALD is in solidarity with the people of Leyte, Central Visayas and the whole country of the Philippines in having the same hope – a better and brighter life beyond Haiyan (Yolanda). CALD therefore calls for a more unified, amplified and aggressive effort from all stakeholders to ensure that lives will recover at the soonest possible time and that history will never get the chance to repeat the story again.

Relief – Rebuild – Recover – Resilience.