CWS Helps Pakistan Quake Survivors Learn New Trades, Rebuild, Return to Villages
Church World Service is helping Pakistan quake survivors learn new trade skills as the recovery stage shift to returning survivors to their villages.
Church World Service is helping Pakistan quake survivors learn new trade skills as the recovery stage shift to returning survivors to their villages.
The humanitarian agency is teaching young Pakistani men how to rebuild and gain new livelihood skills in a new construction trade training center in Mansehra according to a CWS report on Tuesday. At the center, young men – who have been living in tent villages following the 7.6-magnitude quake on Oct. 8, 2005 – learn masonry, electrical work, plumbing, carpentry, and welding as part of CWS’s comprehensive recovery and rehabilitation program in the region.
The CWS office in Pakistan reports that Pakistan’s Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) is at work on a comprehensive plan focusing on housing policies and restoration of health and education facilities so that construction in earthquake-affected areas can begin immediately.
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CWS communications officer Shama Mall says attention to livelihoods is "a major part of our recovery strategy.”
“The earthquake has affected the agriculture and livestock, both main sources of people's livelihoods," she adds, according to the CWS report. “Due to landslides, a lot of people have not only lost their homes but also their farmland.”
A psychosocial program provided by CWS has helped prepare survivors to face the future over the past four months. According to CWS Pakistan, the program has helped traumatized women become more self-reliant and help them to be able to share personal stories and concerns more openly.
The psychosocial team has also assisted quake-displaced women with income-generating projects including a February handicraft exhibition in the Shohal Najaf tent village where women exhibited and sold embroidery items, hand-made clothing and decorative pieces. CWS gave prizes for creativity and craftsmanship and distributed hygiene-kits and warm clothes to participants. The agency also distributed chairs to teachers in the tent village and 800 kits containing clothes, jackets, and shoes. One hundred sleeping bags were distributed at a nearby camp.
In Maira tent village, the Church World Service team reports that women residents have begun to apply the hygiene education they've received and are becoming more comfortable and open with aid workers.
Even while supporting the region's psychosocial, reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts, CWS continues to provide basic needs assistance, including water and sanitation projects. Because of the massive damage caused by the earthquake, Church World Service is continuing its U.S. fundraising campaign to support long-term recovery in the affected areas.
