CWS to Provide Psychological Support for Traumatized Survivors
Church World Service is now focusing on long-term recovery programs in Indonesia’s tsunami batter Aceh province
An international humanitarian agency with longstanding presence in Indonesia is now focusing on long-term recovery programs in Indonesia’s tsunami batter Aceh province and delivering immediate, critically needed psychosocial support for survivors traumatized by the region’s devastating tsunami.
"CWS Indonesia’s large regional staff and local partners were well positioned to begin delivering aid almost from day one,” said Rick Augsburger, Emergency Response Program Director for Church World Service (CWS).
"But, while immediate emergency efforts continue in Aceh and other affected areas of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India we’re now looking at long-term recovery programs," he said.
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Thousands of bodies are still being pulled out of the mud in the remote villages of Indonesia, where the death toll rose to 106,523 on Wednesday. Meanwhile tens of thousands of people remain homeless residents in Aceh’s provincial capital, Banda Aceh—which President Bush said was going to require the most intense effort.
"Banda Aceh will be the focus of CWS response in Indonesia," says Augsburger. "We are planning to assist 50,000 displaced persons in Banda Aceh, with a special emphasis on children, female-headed households, widows, the elderly, unemployed families with limited means, and people or families who have not yet received aid.”
The director added, "Part of that work will be to provide psychosocial intervention for three months as crisis intervention and then for nine months as post-crisis intervention.”
UNICEF and the World Health Organization report that providing psychological services will be critical in coming weeks for the millions who have lost family, homes, and whole communities in hard-hit Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and affected coastal areas of Africa.
"The mind can barely grasp what these people have been through and what they will need to begin to recover – especially the children," Augsburger said.
A CWS Indonesia Emergency Assessment team recently concluded that disaster survivors in that country are likely "to be living in camps longer than expected" because of the scope of the disaster. The agency said that the current living conditions is likely to aggravate what trauma the survivors may have experienced.
In addition to planning crisis-stage trauma interventions, CWS Indonesia reported that medicines requested by its medical team in Banda Aceh arrived there yesterday. The agency is deploying medical teams on a rotating basis, with a fresh medical team arriving today
"We received badly needed drinking water supplies and mattresses in Banda Aceh this week, from our warehoused supplies. We also distributed 1,300 food packets in affected areas of Lambaro, Sibreh, and Darussalam," Augsburger said.
Meanwhile, volunteers from CWS Indonesia’s Banda Aceh partner Mamamia are distributing food to people who are homeless but not living in camps. Sources say more than 655,144 people in the provinces of Aceh and Northern Sumatra are now homeless.
A large shipment of CWS Blankets and "Gift of the Heart" Health Kits is also en route to Banda Aceh now from the agency’s Jakarta resources, according to the CWS Indonesia team in Aceh.
CWS says an upcoming shipment of Emergency Medicine Boxes will be able to serve basic medical needs for 100,000 people for three months.
The agency is planning food security, livelihood projects now.
Augsburger says CWS’s post-crisis response in the area of Banda Aceh will include support to strengthen food security and livelihood recovery by providing seeds, tools, fishing equipment, training assistance, and capacity building.
"Church World Service and its supporters remain active and committed to those in need in the 80-plus other areas of the world we serve," said Augsburger, "but those in South Asia and East Africa affected by the tsunami are going to need the world’s long-term attention. They’ll have it from us."
To date Church World Service has shipped more than $1 million in initial emergency supplies and medicines to the battered region and is channeling contributions to immediate and long-term support.
