CARIGARA, Leyte- Residents of various barangays of this town whose houses were damaged due to the onslaught of supertyphoon Yolanda, received shelter materials from a Japan-based group.The Peace Wind has a target 690 families to be given the shelter materials, of which 75 percent of them already received the donation, said Satoshi Kawai, the group representative. The families, who are mostly living in upland villages of Carigara, were chosen through the group’s regional partner, the Leyte Center for Development, Inc. (LCDE).The shelter kits distributed to the beneficiaries include GI sheets, plywood and coco lumber with an equivalent amount of P11, 000.According to Kawai, their group chose to help residents of Carigara after they learned that only few international humanitarian groups and local non-government organizations have extended assistance to the affected families of said town which sustained damages due to Yolanda.“We went first to Samar to help the residents affected there but we learned that the province is already crowded with international and local NGOs that provides relief and rehabilitation assistance. That is why we went here to Leyte and chose Carigara to be given with assistance,” Satoshi explained.He added that at first, they wanted to focus in providing shelter needs of the residents but after seeing some public facilities for children in Carigara that were also damaged by the supertyphoon, they decided to rebuild two day care centers in the said town.“We will continue helping typhoon -affected residents in this province as long as there is fund coming,’ Satoshi said. Meantime, LCDE executive director, Jazmin Jerusalem and a companion will be sent to Japan to help them raise more funds for their relief and rehabilitation efforts.“Right now, people like in Japan had slowly forgotten what had happened here. So we need to strengthen our effort in looking for funds for our rehabilitation program by asking those who had personally experienced the typhoon to talk with our local donors so help will not be stopped,” Satoshi added.(ROEL T. AMAZONA)
