1:47 P.M. EST
Real Audio of Briefing
MR. BOOKBINDER: Good afternoon, and welcome to the Foreign Press Center. Today’s presentation will be on the tsunami and aftermath: U.S. NGOs’ role in rebuilding. And we’re very pleased to have with us three senior representatives of American NGOs, starting with Mr. Jim Bishop, with Interaction; Mr. Courtney Brown, with Food for the Hungry; and finally, Nancy Yuan, with the Asia Foundation.
Without further ado, I’d like to begin our presentations. Each of the speakers will make brief opening remarks, and then we’ll go to Q&A. Mr. Bishop.
MR. BISHOP: My name is Jim Bishop, and I am the Director of Humanitarian Policy and Practice at Interaction. Interaction is a coalition of 160 American nongovernmental organizations that operate in all of the developing countries of the world, providing assistance in the areas of economic development, disaster response and refugee relief.
Our members are drawn from both the faith-based and secular communities in the United States, and are drawn from across most of the states of our nation. Some of the 160 members of the coalition have responded in all of the countries affected by the tsunami disaster. Many of them are providing assistance directly. Some of them are working through local affiliates or through members of international networks in which they are participants. Some are providing gifts in kind, or commodities to be used by partners operating in the area. Many are providing assistance to local affiliates. They are aiding in all of the disciplines of disaster assistance. These include shelter repair and reconstruction, water and sanitation, health services, provision of emergency food, psychosocial assistance, each prioritizing its assistance in the areas in which it has particular expertise.
A number of our members were active in the affected countries at the time of the onset of the crisis and were able to mobilize immediately. Other had to deploy their resources, personnel, and other from outside the area. Some are implementing partners of the United States Government and/or of the UN agencies which are responding. Those are receiving funding from the agencies with whom they are collaborating. Most of the agencies, however, are operating primarily on the basis of their own resources.
This has been an exceptional crisis, not only in the number of our members who are responding, but in the generosity of the support that they have received from the American public. Our 70 members have received, as of the last count, $1.91 billion in assistance from the American public, corporations and foundations.
In the area, they are working in collaboration with local governments, with the United Nations, with each other, and, as I indicated earlier, with their local partners. They stress local participation in the design of their programs, as well as in the implementation of their programs. Most are engaged for the long-term. They anticipate being in the region from three to five years. The recovery activities in which they are participating include shelter, education, medical services, job training, microfinance and other activities intended to support economic recovery – provision of agricultural equipment, fishing boats, et cetera.
Their work at the local level compliments what governments will be doing to repair and replace infrastructure which was devastated by the tsunami. Here in Washington, our members are engaged collectively in pressing the United States Congress to be generous in its response to the tsunami, an effort made easy by the pressure that the American public has put on the Congress and by the interest of members of the Congress themselves in responding in a generous fashion. I look forward to your questions and comments at the appropriate time.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Now we'll go over to Mr. Brown.
MR. BROWN: My name is Courtney Brown. I am the Food Security Officer with Food for the Hungry. I'll give you some background information about the organization. Food for the Hungry is a Christian relief and development organization. It was started in 1971 by Larry Ward in Southeast Asia. Since that time, we've grown into a family of nine national organizations, so there's a Food for the Hungry Sweden, Food for the Hungry U.K., Food for the Hungry Japan, Korea, Hong Kong. We are currently working in 45 countries around the world with a staff of – in excess of 2,000. Let’s see, the regions of the world in which we work are Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
I have a colleague coming from the office to bring some brochures, which will hopefully be at the back of the room after the Q&A session. And I would encourage you to visit our website: www.fh.org to learn more about our organization and about what we're doing with the tsunami response in South and Southeast Asia.
Food for the Hungry is currently working in three countries in the tsunami response: Indonesia, Thailand and India. Before I talk about the specifics of our programs in each of those countries, I would like to give you an idea of what our regional strategy is for why we are involved in the type of programming in which we are involved.
The Food for the Hungry regional strategic plan has two phases and the initial phase sought to meet the critical emergency water, food and health needs of the tsunami-affected populations. So this first phase of our programs started on December the 28th in Banda Aceh, Indonesia; shortly thereafter in Thailand and in India. We focused on, as I mentioned, emergency health, water, sanitation. That phase lasted until I left. I was in Indonesia the beginning of January and I left at the end of January. So all of the sectors in which I just mentioned, those were part of the phase one activities. But then as needs changed on the ground, obviously our programs would have to change to meet those changing needs.
And so, then our strategy revolved, or evolved, more from just keeping people alive to, okay, what could we do to lay the foundation for more, longer-term development? What can we do to help people get back on their feet, to regain a bit of normalcy in their lives? And so, activities that fell under this second phase of the strategic response were, again, activities focused on livelihood restoration. What can we do to get farmers back in the fields or merchants back in the markets or fisherman back out on the water? That's one component of the second phase strategy.
Another one is infrastructure rehabilitation: school reconstruction, government office reconstruction, clearing debris, clearing canals which allow for water to go back out to the sea – a lot of standing water around, malaria problems, that sort of thing.
And then the third component of this phase two is soft education. There were a lot of teachers, a lot of health care workers, that were lost in the tsunami. And so Food for the Hungry is focusing on the training of teachers, the training of health care workers, to accompany the rebuilding of schools and health care clinics that other organizations are currently involved in. So that’s the overall regional response, or the regional strategic plan.
Then with the country specifics, I will start with India. Food for the Hungry is working with the local organization, Epicor, in an area south of Chennai in a Tamil Nadu state and Nagapattiniam district. Let’s see, our activities there include Cash for Work, where we are currently employing I think between 13- and 1,400 workers, focusing on debris clearing and canal clearing. Another activity that we're involved is focusing on livelihood restoration and that’s asset replenishment. So what happened when the tsunami came through is a lot of the tailors lost their sewing machines, or their assets needed to engage in that type of livelihood activity. So Food for the Hungry is working with tailors, working with mill owners, it’s providing small cash grants to small business owners to help them get their businesses started again. So that’s the scope of activities, again, working through Epicor, an Indian organization in India.
Funding – Food for the Hungry’s funding for those activities comes from a variety of different areas, one being the United States Government, through the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance; and then a second revenue stream or funding stream being through private resources that Food for the Hungry has generated.
Moving on to activities in Thailand, Food for the Hungry is part of the “We Love Thailand” program, which involves a family or a partnership of different international NGOs of which World Vision, World Concern, Habitat for Humanity and different local Thai NGOs are a part. Then also, as part of that “We Love Thailand” program, we have different corporate sponsors, Deloitte and Touche being one. The “We Love Thailand” program is active in 21 villages in the tsunami-affected area around Phuket. This year's budget is going to be roughly $3.3 million, with plans to rebuild or repair homes, replenish shelter – or fishing boats, provide kid-safe zones – that’s an element of protection – schools, fishing piers, that sort of things. So, again, more livelihood restoration activities.
And then finally, Food for the Hungry's programs in Indonesia. We are currently working – or based out of Malabo which is in the Aceh Province – working between Meulaboh and Calang in those coastal villages, so – villages like Teunam. Maybe our Indonesia representative can help me out a little bit. I think that there are three more. If you want to ask me about them in the Q&A session, we can do that.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Yeah, we’ll do it in the Q&A, sure.
MR. BROWN: Current activities involve, again, Cash for Work, livelihood restoration, similar to our programs in India, focusing on farmers, merchants, tailors, rickshaw drivers. So basically, people involved in livelihoods outside of the fishing industry, because what Food for the Hungry has seen is that there are a lot of organizations that are focused on or intend to engage in livelihood restoration activities, targeting fishermen, targeting that fishing industry. And so we want to complement these activities by focusing on different parts of the population.
And an interesting relationship that has occurred through Food for the Hungry’s work in Indonesia is a sister city agreement that’s been formed through the city of Phoenix here in the United States, which is where Food for the Hungry U.S. is headquartered. Our U.S. headquarters is in Phoenix, Arizona. So the City of Phoenix came to Food for the Hungry shortly after the tsunami and said we would like to investigate sister city opportunities in Indonesia. And just – so through working on that, a sister city agreement was formed between Phoenix and Meulaboh, and part of this agreement will involve the training of teachers, health care workers, people in civil society, as well as providing financial resources that are being raised through the city of Phoenix and through business leaders in that area.
And so the agreement that’s been brokered or been formed between Phoenix and Meulaboh, it’s a ten-year agreement. Obviously, the span or the duration of this relationship is going to depend in large part on the Government of Indonesia’s decision regarding the April 26 decision that they’re making about whether or not to allow international NGOs and international aid workers to remain in Aceh Province.
That gives you an overview of who we are, what our regional strategy is, what we’re doing in each of the different countries. And as Jim mentioned earlier, when it comes time, I’ll be happy to answer your questions.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay, thank you. Ms. Yuan.
MS. YUAN: My name is Nancy Yuan. I’m Vice President and Director of the Washington office of the Asia Foundation. The Asia Foundation is based in San Francisco. We have 17 offices throughout the Asia-Pacific region. We are celebrating our 50th anniversary this year so we’ve been in and around the region for a long time.
We do have offices in each of the tsunami-affected countries. The largest part of our activities are in Indonesia but we also have some activities in Thailand and in Sri Lanka.
Unlike my other colleagues, the Asia Foundation does not represent a relief organization. We are an organization that is grant-making, provides technical assistance in the areas of governance, the rule of law, civil society development, economic reform. And so when we looked at what it was we could do in the context of the tsunami disaster, between the earthquake and the tsunami itself, we thought about our approach. And our approach has always been to work through local partner organizations.
In Indonesia we are working through Muhammadiyah, which is one of the two mass-based organizations, religious organizations, in Indonesia, which has an enormous reach throughout the Province of Aceh. They have been, in addition to their social and religious activities, they run hospitals and orphanages and schools and have a very wide reach and enormous credibility in the Province. So all of our programs in Indonesia, in Aceh, are run through Muhammadiyah through assistance.
They include providing relief workers, covering the cost of those relief workers to stay in Aceh. They are drawn from the nationwide network of Muhammadiyah. We also have some programs with schools. We have programs that relate to communications. Very soon after the tsunami happened, what happened was all of the radio and communications were knocked out, and so we very quickly got Radio 68 Asia – Radio 68-H, up and running. It’s a satellite radio station that provides programming for community radio. And they, in addition to providing news programming and emergency notices, also provided information on missing persons.
A major grant that we’ve made in Indonesia just in the last couple of weeks is to Indonesia Corruption Watch. They have been asked by President Yudhoyono to monitor reconstruction projects in Aceh. So there will be 32 teams of monitors looking at reconstruction projects going forward.
In Thailand, many of our programs relate to legal aid and legal assistance to people who are lacking in documentation either for land or for other reasons and need legal assistance, finding ways to go through the government processes on how to get relief. Many people in southern Thailand are unaware of how to go about doing that.
We are also looking at disaster preparedness training in Indonesia, Thailand and in Sri Lanka.
Our programs in Sri Lanka have actually focused – as I say, we’re not a relief organization. They have focused on relief because many of our programs have gone through faith-based organizations that are working in Sri Lanka to provide relief and assistance. We also have a program in psychosocial training and trauma that is funded by OFDA.
The Asia Foundation’s programs for the tsunami are all privately funded. We’ve raised money both through the foundation and through the foundation’s affiliate organization, Give to Asia, which is a nonprofit organization that facilitates private giving to Asia for a variety of purposes.
Our website is www.asiafoundation.org and you can find information and I would be happy to answer questions as well.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Thank you very much. Let’s go right to the questions. Let me remind you before you ask a question, to please introduce yourself and your news organization. And we’ll have microphones. Please do wait for the microphone.
Okay, let’s begin. Please, we'll go to India in the front.
QUESTION: Parasuram from the Press Trust of India. Generally, how is the relief going? Are you on target in the – as regards relief? And what would you say is your great achievement so far in all these countries?
MR. BISHOP: In terms of being on target, the most serious problem that the relief agencies experienced was physical access as a result of the physical destruction caused by the earthquake and the consequent tsunami, so that there was a delay in the ability of the agencies to provide the lifesaving assistance in which they specialize.
As the local authorities, with the assistance, in some cases, of other members of the international community, were able to overcome or compensate for the damage that had been done to the physical infrastructure to bring in additional transport, to bring in fuel supplies, they have been able to extend their reach out into the countryside, and are now in touch with all affected populations in all of the countries concerned, with the possible exception of Somalia, where the security conditions do continue to hamper relief activities.
So the greatest accomplishment was to have been able to mobilize and deploy in a fashion which, with the good sense and good practices of the indigenous community, has resulted in the absence of any major outbreaks of disease, which could have taken away more of the residents of the country to suffer so grievously from the immediate impact of the earthquake and tsunami.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Excellent. Please.
MR. BROWN: To reiterate Jim’s point, access, physical access, to tsunami-affected populations, especially along Aceh Province, Indonesia’s west coast – that west coast road was completely destroyed, which isolated a lot of those villages. And if not for the Singaporean, Australian and U.S. militaries that were operating in country at that point in time, it would have been exceedingly, exceedingly difficult to access those areas. Those militaries did an incredible job moving people, moving supplies to these extremely difficult to reach areas.
MR. BOOKBINDER: All right. Let’s continue. Let’s go to the back, please.
QUESTION: Hi, my name is Ade, I’m with Voice of America, Indonesian Service. And I would just like to know if last week’s earthquake in Sumatra has any affect at all to your relief and reconstruction efforts. If so, how? Thank you.
MR. BISHOP: Well, it certainly created new needs, as we all know. Several hundred people, if not more, perished. And there have also been many hundreds of people who have been physically injured, have lost their shelter, and are otherwise in need of emergency assistance. That has been deployed expeditiously as a result of the buildup of our community and others in the Province of Aceh and the proximity of the two islands most affected, to the mainland, the availability of helicopter transport.
So there’s been a very quick deployment of relief personnel to undertake needs assessments and a rapid delivery of personnel who are currently providing services and the equipment that they need in order to care for, feed, provide water and other basic needs to the affected populations.
MR. BROWN: As Jim mentioned, the earthquake obviously creates additional need. But what has allowed us as a relief community to respond more quickly to those needs are the established pipelines that are already in place due to the ongoing relief efforts that have taken place over the past couple of months.
So, Food for the Hungry, because we’re operational in Malabo, because we have doctors and health care workers there, we have a pipeline going in there, we were able to get on a helicopter, go to the island of Nias a day after the earthquake, provide emergency health care, be involved with food distribution, set up emergency water systems that help us respond or meet people’s needs more expeditiously than what might have been, had we not had operations in Aceh Province, prior to the second earthquake.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay. Would you care to address that, or --
MS. YUAN: No, I would just agree that once you’re set up, you can be in the more immediate area much quicker, and that’s either fortunate or unfortunate, given the circumstance.
MR. BISHOP: I think it’s also relevant that the Indonesian Government has had time to recover. Another of the impediments to the delivery of humanitarian assistance in Aceh was the fact that so many thousands of Indonesian civil servants lost their lives to the earthquake and the tsunami and were not in place to provide health services to drive the trucks, to reopen the schools, and the Government has now had an opportunity to begin to deploy other personnel to the region, and the Indonesian Government itself has responded quite quickly to this second earthquake.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Yes, please, let’s.
QUESTION: Khalil Bughio from Pakistan News Agency. My question is, is the religion in any way a hurdle or helpful as a tool in this regard? There are – I must say, first of all, there – some interest groups are there in the affect areas, and they have some false claims, as if the religion aspect or faith-based organizations, as if they are not doing much or if they could do much more, though the local contribution is minimal or – I mean, like this.
Secondly, is there any coordination between the NGOs, the faith-based organizations, and – among (inaudible), you know, depending on the requirements of the field or area? Thank you.
MR. BISHOP: Interaction is rather unusual among NGO consortia in that it has a code of conduct, or private voluntary organization principles. And those principles prohibit a religious test for the provision of assistance, so that all assistance by our members is being provided on the basis of need, without any consideration being given to the religious affiliation of those who are being assisted.
As for coordination, coordination is taking place among many members of the NGO community who are experienced in this area. And it is taking place between those which are faith-based and those which have secular origins. There has been an enormous number of nongovernmental organizations arriving in the area, most particularly in Aceh and Sri Lanka. Many of those – hundreds of organizations don’t have the same experience – they’re not members of Interactions so they’re not subscribers to our code, and I can’t really speak for them or their practices.
MR. BROWN: And I would like to add a comment on that. As Food for the Hungry, as a member of Interaction, I would like to stress that the provision of our services is based purely on need, not on creed or belief system or value system. And I think Jim presented that point well.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Nancy.
MS. YUAN: There has been a great effort, particularly in Indonesia, to coordinate. There is a common set of principles, which is in the packet that I left out at the front, that has been agreed to for operations in Aceh. Most of the major relief organizations, including members of the Interaction, have signed on to it, as well as many of the donor organizations. It’s basically a common set of principles that set out the kinds of terms under which people will – I guess a code of conduct that they will behave under. And one of that is to try to encourage local ownership, to try to get Acehnese voices into the process and to find out what their views, in terms of local people are, on reconstruction efforts.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Please. Right up front.
QUESTION: Dini Rahim from Voice of America, Indonesian Service. Mr. Bishop, you mentioned earlier about the amount of funding now that has been granted to Aceh. Are you seeing – that’s quite a huge amount for me – are you seeing a humanitarian industrial complex here? And if so, how long do you think these NGOs would stay, their relief assistance, especially from international community, would stay in Aceh? I think this question is address to all panelists. Thank you.
MR. BISHOP: The figure that I gave – the figure in excess of $1 billion – is that which has been received by all our members for all of their work in all of the affected countries. It’s not a number that is specific to Aceh. Our member organizations will be deciding how much of that is spent in the countries in which they are operating. Some of them are operating in just one, some of them are operating in virtually all of the countries, most of them are operating in several.
I’m not quite sure what you meant by a “humanitarian industrial complex.” But if you’d like to clarify, I’d be happy to try to respond to the question more adequately.
In terms of how long will they stay, that obviously will depend in large measure on the decisions made by the Government of Indonesia, which has announced that it is undertaking a review of the activities of humanitarian organizations with a view to making a determination sometime after April the 26th on those that it will welcome staying on and those that may feel have completed their work and should be perhaps moving on elsewhere.
Our member organizations are, as I mentioned, there for the long term. They recognize that recovery from an event as catastrophic as this is going to require years, not months. There are lives to be rebuilt, there are homes to be rebuilt, there are economic assets to be reconstituted so that they are expecting to remain engaged in the countries affected for three to five years, and thanks to the generosity of the American people, they have sufficient financial resources to be able to do that.
MR. BROWN: Regarding the tenure or the duration of how long organizations can be or will be expected to work in the tsunami-affected region, I think, at least in the Aceh context, I think that is probably contingent on three different things. As Jim mentioned, there is the Government of Indonesia’s decision regarding international organizations working in Aceh. The second thing would be the organizational mandate. There are some organizations that choose to focus solely on relief response, and so those are the organizations that will be the first to consider their work in Aceh complete and move on to other areas or other theaters.
And then the third thing would, of course, be funding, funding and needs. Jim mentioned that the funding, the outpouring of compassion and support has been incredible by the American people, so it’s given organizations like Food for the Hungry the resources that we need to meet the needs that we see on the ground. But the needs will also determine how long we choose to stay there.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Would you care to address that, Nancy, or –
MS. YUAN: Well, the Asia Foundation has longstanding programs in all of these countries and we’ve had programs in Aceh for many, many years and I think we will continue to do that.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay, let’s go to Japan in the fifth row.
QUESTION: Lisa Thomas with Kyodo News. I wanted to find out whether any of your organizations work to fight human trafficking of women and children, which we heard so much about following the tsunami, and what the status is on that.
MR. BISHOP: The governments concerned were quickly seized with that problem and took a number of steps, including in some cases prohibition on foreign travel by those below a certain age unless they were accompanied by parents in order to try to prevent trafficking. While the threat certainly exists, and it was a preexisting problem in some of the countries, there have not been reports of widespread trafficking of children or others, in part perhaps because of the control measures that have been introduced by governments and the attentiveness of local communities as well as members of the NGO, nongovernmental organizations, which have arrived in place and for many of whom this is a particular concern.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay, very good. Are there any additional questions? Please, from Pakistan.
QUESTION: Sir, to Mr. Jim. How is the level of confidence amongst the tsunami-hit area people in Aceh of rendering of assistance by the American NGOs and faith-based organizations?
MR. BISHOP: It truly is difficult for me to respond to that question from this distance, and Courtney, who has been there, may have a more informed view. My understanding is that most of those affected in the area are gradually making a psychological recovery and won’t be in need of long-term psychological support. There will, however, be a percentage of the population that is going to require long-term support. Whether that turns out to be 5 percent of the population or 10 percent of the population remains to be seen, and one hopes, obviously, that it will be the lower number.
But let me ask Courtney to respond, too.
MR. BROWN: I think Jim is correct when he says that a good portion, a good percentage of the population is starting to move on and becoming, if you will, more and more psychologically healthy. I think that the earthquake earlier this week probably reopened a lot of wounds. I know that in talking with our staff and just with our work, the psychosocial interventions with children, that that was certainly the case. So while there has been a lot of work done, there’s still a lot of work left to do.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay, let’s go to the gentleman in the middle.
QUESTION: My name is Kennedy Muslim from VOA of Indonesian Service. I think we agree that the tsunami relief effort is maybe probably the biggest relief effort ever in the history of, like, disaster. What makes this certain disaster different from the past practice, like why does this disaster could galvanize so much support compared to what happened before?
MR. BISHOP: I think a number of people are going to be writing their Ph.D. dissertations on this subject over the course of the coming decade. The sort of immediate responses that have arisen from within our community – and my colleagues, I’m sure, will have something to add – are the fact that it will stay well-covered by the media, that it occurred over the holiday period in the United States, that people in the United States have been accustomed to buying things over the internet, and contributing over the internet became a sort of logical extension of that activity. The magnitude of the crisis, not just affecting one country but affecting ten countries throughout such a vast area, I think all of those were contributing causes to the magnitude of the response.
MR. BROWN: Jim listed the reasons for the American compassion. And I think as far as the international community goes, why did Sweden give so much money to support relief efforts? Why did Germany? And I think it’s because they have substantial percentage of their citizens go on vacation to Thailand. I have a friend in Sweden and she was telling me about a newspaper article that said that the tsunami was Sweden’s worst natural disaster ever. And it was because the country of Sweden lost so many people in the tsunami. And so, there’s a connection that’s been formed just through families going on vacation to the area and I think that also contributed to this compassion that we saw.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay. Are there any final questions?
MR. BROWN: I have a question.
MR. BOOKBINDER: You have a question. Okay, please. (Laughter.)
MR. BROWN: Actually, it’s for Jim. Jim, you mentioned that at last count, Interaction members had raised $1 billion – $1.91 billion at last count. Was that last count prior to the second earthquake this past week in Nias? And I wonder, if it was not, how you think that might affect giving?
MR. BISHOP: The last updating of the report which is on our website was two weeks ago, so it would not include any contributions which came in subsequent to last week’s earthquake.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Excellent. Thank you. Panelists, thank you for your informed and informative presentation. Audience members, thank you very much. Good-bye now.
