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Staying Community-Focused and Barangay Based

The Balay Mindanaw DREAM has expanded its Yolanda disaster emergency response to several barangays in Leyte, Capiz and Iloilo. We have been doing this due to the massive and widespread destruction suffered by many communities. With the support of our donors, we have been delivering food, non-food, hygiene,mshelter repair kits and psycho-social social support to thousands of families in the three provinces.

Now, it is time to return to our community-focused, barangay-based approach. This is the approach that we have developed and embraced in the aftermath of the Sendong and Pablo disasters. This approach enables us to focus our limited resources as we accompany the communities as they struggle to rise from the disaster. This approach, which has the barangay as the focus and locus of intervention, also enables convergence of efforts and resources from various sectors instead of the “pitsi-pitsi” aid to many communities – a hundred tarps here, a hundred food packs there, a few repair kits there, with no significant long-term impact.

This approach has worked so well in Barangay Ban-ao, Baganga, Davao Oriental. It is now time to have our “New Ban-ao” in Panay and Leyte.

While we continue providing relevant and necessary assistance to many barangays, we must now begin going back to our approach.

Our immediate task then is to identify one barangay each in Leyte and Panay. In these barangays, we will do what we did in Ban-ao. Accompany them until they are strong and resilient enough. And then, we move on.