The December 26th 2004 Tsunami:
Rebuilding Lives Six Months After

 

Relief and reconstruction activity began almost immediately on December 26th. Watching people, live on television, fathom what had quite literally hit them, it was impossible not to pull out old clothes, old pots and pans, money and food. Relief at one's own survival, guilt on the same account, compassion and most of all, unspeakable sadness at what had just happened created a great momentum for what the Sri Lankan NGO Sarvodaya calls the "first wave of compassion."

In the intervening six months, nearly every big agency--inter-governmental, governmental or non-governmental--that has a humanitarian or development mandate has become involved in the process of post-tsunami reconstruction. More importantly perhaps, but less well-documented on the worldwide web, are countless local and community organizations that are pitching in in a variety of ways. The major component of this page is the section on recovery and reconstruction activities, which are grouped by the nature of the agency in question. For the most part, the link will be to the agency's own tsunami page.

This close to the event, when impact and damage assessments are still being compiled, it is premature to assess the 'success' of reconstruction efforts. Instead of evaluations, we seek out impressionistic accounts and narrative descriptions of projects along the way.

Every section on this page is, like the reconstruction process itself, a work in progress. You are invited to send in a link to the activities of your organization if they have not been included so far.

 

What we have learned elsewhere

In recent years, humanitarian and development agencies have come to value the habit of introspection with a view to cumulative learning. A small library of lessons learned reports and best practices checklists is now readily available even to tackle this most unusual of calamities.

... and what the tsunami teaches us

 

Chipping In: Who, how, what and where?

This section is intended not as an endorsement of one or another agency's activities or approach to relief and reconstruction work, but an easy access point to the assessments and activities of agencies who are actively engaged with reconstruction work. Further, it is bound to be an incomplete list; therefore, you are requested to supplement the list as you see fit. Where the agency has devoted a section of their site to tsunami-related activities, we link to that section's index page rather than individual projects.

International Organizations

Non-governmental Organizations

International NGOs

Local NGOs

Faith-based NGOs, or in South Asian parlance, the service chapters of spiritual organizations

State Agencies

India

Maldives

Sri Lanka

 

Miles covered, miles to go

The journalistic accounts prepared for online and print media and the very personal reflections of volunteers have been chosen at random for inclusion here. Inclusion does not imply anything more than the fact that this link holds a relatively recent description of life a few months after the tsunami.

Only field reports written after April were initially sought, as a way of illustrating what the very wide range of organizations and activities are on the ground, and what remains to be done. This cut-off however yields a small harvest, and it appears as if both media interest in and the need to chronicle recovery petered off after January.

Some of the accounts generated right after the tsunami are worth reading still. One example:

As six-month reports are being prepared by other scholars and practitioners, they are listed below.

 

Last updated: June 26, 2005


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