HODR blog

damage

2008-09-22T17:08:00.001-07:00

it is what i do, it is what HODR.ORG does, responding to those in need after a natural disaster - but it doesnt get any easier with time, this being the 7th disaster that i have witnessed. yesterday when we arrived in the city of gonaives, haiti i was speechless (as were stef and john as we peered out the windows of our muddy, struggling, lurching 4x4) and then i cried. i cried again today when we visited a school and medical clinic, i cry as i type this.
the damage here is from a river that jumped its bed and raged through the city center. we have found crumbled buildings, hundreds of tumbled cars, broken walls, people living on their roofs, and mud everywhere. a great deal of water is still trapped in the low lying city and it sits chocolate brown defiling all it contacts. there is mud that has baked and curled up around the cracks, there is mud that sucks your boots off, there is mud that moves slowly to the side as you trundle, and there is the silt mud that splashes. all of this mud can be found in the homes, business', schools, and churches of this city populated by 300,000.
the mud is overwhelming in depth and coverage. there are vast areas with 2 feet of mud (some areas more, some areas less) really - block after block after block. in the areas fortunate enough to be somewhat dry the dust is choking. there are people everywhere carrying things on their head with their skirts/pants hiked baring their upper legs and showinga a few splatters of dried mud, as you follow toward the knee the mud is darker, thicker, and finally just wet near the ankle. their steps are measured - as if walking on ice. their pace is steady, their posture is erect.
they are coping, but there is damage to the country, the city, the things, the people......... and the people who witness it.

3 years to the day

2008-09-18T19:30:00.000-07:00

Three years ago today I started my journey with Hands On Disaster Response (HODR), at the time known as “Hands On USA (HOUSA)” during the organization's Katrina relief project in Mississippi. Three years later I have returned to the Gulf Coast to respond to another major hurricane.

On September 18, 2005, I left Massachusetts and flew south to see what I could do to help those affected by Hurricane Katrina. Rob and Helen, two veteran volunteers (having volunteered for several days), picked me up at the airport in Mississippi and brought me to the HOUSA headquarters on Pass Road in Biloxi.

Today I returned to the Gulf to see what not only I, but WE, Hands On Disaster Response, might do to help those affected by Hurricane Ike. This time around Aaron and Tiffany, two multi-project long-term veteran volunteers, picked me up at the airport and this time we are responsible for assessing and setting up a project if needed and possible.

Three years ago to the day that I started I headed into a new disaster zone to potentially create the project where the next volunteer will join our HODR family.

The opportunity to help and the HODR experience has grown by leaps and bounds over the past three years. We have had 9 projects around the world. We are in the midst of our largest project, Project Cedar Rapids, 1600+ volunteers in 88 days and counting, while we are assessing storm damage in both the southern US and in Haiti. We have grown to handle two simultaneous projects at one time (in Pisco, Peru and Rayenda, Bangladesh), and over the next few weeks it is possible that we could end up with three active projects at one time.

So much has changed since I first began hauling tree limbs in Mississippi on those sweltering hot days. One thing hasn’t changed though…whether you’ve been on the ground for two days or two months at a HODR project, you’re a veteran, and even those who only have a day to give are part of the HODR family. This veteran HODR volunteer, and now US Operations Director, is very thankful to all those who have made this last three years such a great experience. You have changed my life and together we’ve changed the lives of those we have helped. Thanks for showing up and digging in.

- Bill

Daniel's Story

2008-08-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

Hello HODR family,

In case you missed it tonight a big chance that we took about a month ago ended up paying off big time. Daniel is sixteen and came to HODR looking to volunteer after he had been turned down by many other orgs...his dad was willing to sign the waiver so no big deal I thought... but Daniel wanted to work with us everyday for a month and his dad wouldn't be around...dad was even leaving the state.

I met with father and son and everything felt right so I agreed to let Daniel volunteer on his own... did I mention Daniel brought his family pick up truck for the duration...I think that should become a requirement.

Daniel ended up being a great long-term volunteer and team leader for us here in Iowa. He is loved by his fellow volunteers and had a great experience overall.

Tonight Daniel was featured on ABC‚s World News as the Person of the Week and in the process gave HODR what we gave him, a big chance. I think this is the biggest press coverage we have ever received. It was a long piece that told Daniel's story and showed exactly what he and other volunteers do everyday here in Iowa with us. We all know that we could cast the Person of Week story for the next 3,000 weeks straight... Daniel got picked and he carried the HODR flame well.

It makes me very proud to be part of an organization, whether we get national news credit or not, that gives people like Daniel the chance to help and make such an impact. Thanks for all of your hard work and your support of me, Project Cedar Rapids, and this ever evolving thing we call HODR.

Today we finished our 151st house gutting, welcomed our 1,000th volunteer (1, 048 by days end) and were part of a positive national news broadcast... let's have more days like this. Keep it up! Keep building HODR!

Read article and watch video here

Thanks
Bill

Zhongguo, jia you! (Go China!) - Stefanie

2008-07-10T19:44:00.000-07:00

When the earthquake happened on May 12, 2008, I was at home in California. For my three previous HODR assessments, I’ve been outside of my home country, without a sense of what kind of media coverage an event garners. Days, even a week after the event, the quake was still very much in the American consciousness. I heard it on NPR while driving, saw it on TV, and tracked it online while checking my email. While I feel like American media coverage of China is often skewed towards the negative, people seemed galvanized by the sheer magnitude of human tragedy that was unfolding. It was a more personal, empathetic side of China than what most people probably think of when it comes to China.

As a Chinese American family we also get CCTV and other Chinese-language news channels in our house, in addition to my dad’s perpetual perusal of Chinese news online. Chest-thumpy coverage of Chinese civilian and government heroes was interspersed with TV benefits featuring fiercely-coiffed Chinese pop stars crooning to orderly lines of flag-waving, uniformed officials and excited school kids.

On May 19th, David made the decision to launch an assessment, and I was immediately on board. Even though I didn’t leave the US for another 10 days, the assessment begins immediately. We track the status of the response, learn about who else is on the ground, and identify target areas through ReliefWeb. We also reach out to NGO contacts with whom we’ve worked in the past to establish links and email personal contacts in-country to see what kind of networks we can tap into there. Meanwhile, I prepared my “to-go kit” (first aid, phones and electronics, HODR wear, documents, travel gear, etc.) and chatted online with John, my partner for this assessment, en route from Nepal.

My parents were skeptical. Oh, the government will take care of it all, my mom said, watch and see, they’ll build it back better than it was before. No one can compare to China! Yeah fine, you mainlander, I thought. My dad was concerned as well, but chose a different tact – shouldn’t you be applying to grad school? Umm, I already bought a ticket. Sorry. Ciao!

I landed in Beijing on May 30th. My brief time there included a meeting with iboughtashelter.com, a hotpot dinner with Kirsty, a HODR alum from Bangladesh (sausages were translated on the menu as “intestine kiss,” ew!), and my Beijing staple: savory pancakes and dumplings with my aunt and uncle. Apparently, they told me, Sharon Stone had said something about the earthquake being karmic payback for China’s actions in Tibet. They were confused – shouldn’t people try to offer support, or just not say anything, they wondered? Uh, yeah, I said, no one in America even watches her movies. I was surprised how hurt I was on their behalf, that a few careless words of some random lady on the other side of the globe could cause them to be upset. I’ve never had an opinion about Sharon Stone!

I started experiencing problems with my email and internet access early on. John remarked that my emails coming out of China all seemed to be delayed, and Marc wondered why I was keeping him out of the loop. China has the “Great Firewall,” which blocks various websites and most blogs to web users. Finding myself unable to load Gmail one day, HODR email the next, I developed paranoia that China was watching me and shutting me down. This coincided with Marc’s visa rejection. I stopped posting to my personal blog, thinking that an impatient comment might get my IP address further restricted. Inexplicably, I could still pull up some seemingly touchy sites (Tibet info?) while not being able to load innocuous ones (popular Chinese snack foods?), no matter what proxy I used. I’ve developed a new theory, that the government wasn’t watching me; they simply apply their firewall at random thus creating paranoia which frankly, is a good strategy. Well played, Chinese government, well played.

I moved on to Chengdu on June 1st. A couple NGOs were already at Sim’s Cozy Garden Hostel, where we’ve stayed the entire duration of this assessment, and more still were at the Chengdu Bookworm, the expat bookshop that’s been our office in the city. If you’re ever in Chengdu, I highly recommend both.

China has been engulfed in a wave of supportive, China-pride sentiment since the earthquake; one example is the rapid proliferation of “I love China” t-shirts everywhere. Men, women, children - I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw a dog happily trotting around in an “I love China” sweater. The shirts are often white, laid out similarly to the ubiquitous “I (heart) NY” shirts. The solid red outline of the country might be printed in the center, or a red heart with the Chinese stars (laid out as on the Chinese flag), or the date “512” emblazoned in bold, maybe with the Beijing Olympics logo or rings added somewhere as an afterthought, with a panda thrown in for good measure as well. Design restraint doesn’t seem to be much of a concept here.

Initially I was incredibly energized by the NGOs getting started, the outpouring of support from regular Chinese citizens, and the perceived atmosphere of change and openness in the government. I felt there was a tremendous opportunity in the pool of Chinese students, Chinese professionals and companies looking to get involved, and robust expat community, in addition to loyal HODR alumni chomping at the bit to get dirty again. Yet, I still felt wary of operating as a foreigner in China. Everything I’d read and heard was that NGO work is a fledgling concept here, and that there is incredible ambiguity and inconsistency in working here.

Our usual approach to assessment is to visit sites in the field, make courtesy calls to local officials, and have interviews with government, NGOs, and citizens. Somehow I got it into my head that I needed to roll low-profile, avoid authorities, and network heavily with international groups. Wow, completely wrong! After two days of field assessments, I’d been stopped by police twice, instructed not to take photos, escorted out of an area by a police car, and been asked for my passport and visa (I lied and said I didn’t have it with me). I also hadn’t seen a single INGO working on the ground – only a Muslim Hands truck which passed by, shaded windows rolled all the way up. I realized that if I wasn’t meeting authorities head-on and concurrently feeling out permission to operate while assessing sites, then what I was doing amounted to sight-seeing. And so I went back to the original HODR M.O. – courtesy calls and meetings with officials. Duh.

John arrived on June 5th, and after a few more days of field assessments, our focus shifted to securing “permission” (whatever that meant) to work in our target areas. It was a futile goose chase to do this ourselves; village chiefs referred us to city officials, city officials hemmed and hawed and waved us to provincial authorities, provincial authorities avoided eye contact while stammering something vague about the Chinese Red Cross or the city-level officials, and then city officials shrugged and pointed to Beijing. Our tenacious translator Monica shook her head angrily after a day of rejection, “it’s such bullshits!”

One of the ways that we try and establish our “street cred” is by name-dropping some of the large INGOs we’ve worked with in the past. One problem though – UNICEF, Salvation Army, Save the Children – the average Chinese person has never heard of any of these. (Interestingly, a ton of people know WWF. Well played, WWF, for using the panda as your worldwide logo! Well played.) And so we shifted our strategy to looking for Chinese NGOs to partner with. The initial round of Chinese NGOs we found were energetic and eager, but rather inexperienced. Few had active earthquake response projects, and while interested in partnering with us, they simply didn’t realize the challenges involved with foreign NGOs. Invitations to meet and visit their sites slowly yielded to the realization that their tentative relationship with governments could be adversely affected by our presence, and they all backed away from working with us.

We got a taste of what it would be like to work in China when we went on a test build of an iboughtashelter.com shelter in the village of Baiguocun. I described this briefly in our second assessment update on hodr.org. The shelter is a dome-like tunnel framed with a mesh of split bamboo, wrapped in a sheath of durable, laminated tarpaulin that could last at least one year. Initially bewildered, the villagers started to rally; a crowd quickly gathered and villagers scattered and returned with random antiquated, rusty old tools which of course worked better that our shiny new picks and shovels. Amazing fun and energy! Four hours later, we’d finished the prototype. When were we coming to move in, asked the villagers? Oops. While they thought that the shelter was durable strong and better than what they currently were living it, they said it simply required too much time and too many people to set up. This would have been a great HODR project – our volunteers could work with individual families to set these up as shelters, community spaces, harvest storage, etc. In the end, the villagers of Baiguocun rigged up the shelter with a satellite dish and electricity; it’s where the people congregate to watch TV, play mahjong, and socialize, assured of its strength and ability to keep out the rain.

We conducted our assessments largely with the help of local guides/translators. Sichuan has its own dialect, and once people get going, I can’t make head or tail of it with my Mandarin. All of our translators can speak both Mandarin and Sichuan. Kipling, pictured with kids at the top of our fourth assessment update on hodr.org, was our main translator. He organized, strategized, and has a father who is a human GPS system. Monica balanced her exam and study schedule with persistent follow-up phone calls to everyone we ever talked to. Lily helped us source materials in Chengdu and translate documents and emails. I had fun with Una, who chatted with me in French and then translated to Chinese. Jackie would listen patiently to our ramblings and then ask, “ok, what’s your point?” thus helping us to streamline our message. Alex and I would get caught up in Mandarin clarifications to each other, leaving John in our linguistic dust. All of these people were critical to the progress of our assessment.

Rolling around in taxis in Chengdu was a good way to see how the earthquake was still very much in the public consciousness. There are large red banners everywhere, boldly lettered with encouraging and patriotic slogans. Every cabbie had their radio turned to talk radio, discussing some aspect of the quake or the response. One female host recalled how minutes after the quake, she started receiving text messages from a listener in a severely affected area. Dramatically, the host set up her program, at which point she called the mobile number and had a voice conversation with her mystery lifeline…which was actually pretty anti-climactic. I often heard one radio spot, a gallant male and empathetic female voice taking turns orating lofty mottos, culminating in a chorus chanting “Jia you!” (Sounds like "ja yo!") It’s the Chinese way of saying “go!” in English, or “allez!” in French. Wenchuan, jia you! Sichuan, jia you! Zhong guo, jia you! Wenchuan, go! (Wenchuan was the epicenter of the quake.) Sichuan, go! CHINA, GO! John really liked this, and would randomly exclaim “jia you!” when walking around or thinking to himself.

Another challenge was in trying to communicate our model, programs, and the evolution of our work to officials and other NGOs. Clearing rubble? Oh, the army is doing that. Are they doing it now? No. Do you know when they will? No. Don’t people need to clear a space to build their temporary house? Yes, but the government is building temporary houses. Will the government build temporary houses in this village? No. So what’s your plan? The government hasn’t told us yet. Oof! So they’d change the line of questioning. Where are your experts? What kind of training program do you offer your volunteers? What’s your budget? What can you build? We’ve encountered this everywhere we’ve worked before, but usually we’re able to explain how HODR fills a different niche. Here, we couldn’t get around the narrow mentality, which frustrated me immensely. Effective response is about simultaneously pursuing different kinds of relief activity. Of course the government takes care of large-scale needs; NGOs are meant to be complementary. The value of HODR’s work can’t be fully expressed through this bottom line type of thinking.

In China, charitable donations are public, and therefore quite scrutinized. Some companies sent office-wide memos recommending how much employees should give, depending on their position in the company. Celebrities were chastised (and thrashed by China’s voracious online community) for not giving “enough.” In the west, charitable giving is often a private, or at least a quiet affair. Here, TV news kept a vigilant update like a PBS pledge-a-thon. At the local Starbucks, the “community board” maintained its cheerful scrapbook aesthetic, but was carefully arranged with photos of their staff dropping cash donations into a collection box. Each staff member was posed with their ¥100 bills fanned out, so that you could see how many they were giving.

There is some legitimacy to the singular “the government will take care of it” mentality that people have. This government does do a lot for its people. It has tremendous resources and it knows how to mobilize them. On my first day out in the field, the highway was packed with trucks transporting prefab housing materials to far flung locations. In addition to the massive 10,000 module community that stretched out like a sea, soldiers also dropped off a neat stack of 21 units in a rural hamlet I visited. Impressive coverage. I won’t go off on the considerable issues and needs that remain – credit should simply be given where it’s due.

In other places HODR has worked, we’ve been able to find someone who puts their faith in us, or at least is open to having us start work, see what we’re doing, and then evaluate. And if we just get that opportunity, I’m supremely confident of our ability to perform and impress. I’m wary of starting off our relationship with an official by offering to build a temporary medical center. What comes next? Part of the beauty of HODR is that we start off by simply offering our hands, our volunteers. From this, we build a relationship with the community, start work on more complex and involved projects, and then we’re recognized for both the hard and soft benefits that our volunteers contribute. Here, it’s quite difficult to get that chance.

Things never seemed to line up quite right. The government might allow us to work in one area, but there was simply not enough infrastructure to be able to support a volunteer base without being a burden on the local community. In another place, the community vibe was great but the road leading to the town was buried in daily mudslides that would persist through the rainy season. In yet another, the potential work was a good fit but local officials were about as interested in us as Tim is interested in wearing shoes.

As our time in Chengdu dragged on, we fell into the habit of having ice cream every day after lunch. There’s a shop down the street from Sim’s which has 10 ice cream coolers, nothing else, and a constantly evolving selection of bars and cones to choose from. John has an uncanny knack for consistently choosing terrible flavors every day. It’s been so long now that I think he aspires to it. If I may say so myself, I choose pretty good ones.

A significant disappointment was that foreign volunteers were viewed as a liability to the government officials and Chinese NGOs that we met. John and I felt strong pressure to restrict the numbers of foreigners (and therefore HODR alumni) who could participate. This was troubling, since the global mix of our volunteer community is one of the things that produces memorable exchanges with the community served, part of what’s unique and fun about HODR. I have absolutely no problem with a majority Chinese-volunteer event, was certainly excited at the prospect, but was disappointed that we would need to explicitly gate foreign participation to get our start. Marc and I have always been adamant in our open, no minimum time commitment, no required skills policy. This would be a major change.

Last week, I met Marc in Beijing and we spent a few days in meetings. It seemed like the perfect time to make these connections. Enough time had lapsed since the quake for some groups to get their programs started and for things to stabilize. Overall, these Beijing contacts operated at a higher level with better government relations, reacted positively to our model, and offered creative ideas on how to get started. But we still faced the same fundamental problems to launching a project: access to the area, government permission, and sensitivity to foreigners.

I know of one NGO doing work similar to us that’s up and running. CODE is a Japanese group staying at Sim’s, which sends teams of Japanese volunteers to a rural village (where that 21-unit temporary housing I mentioned is) to do rubble work. Every evening they burst out of their van in a cloud of dust, looking tired and happy. I feel kind of jealous, but also gratified to know that our kind of work is quite valued and appreciated at the local level. They say that the reception to their work in the village is tremendous. Now they’re starting to look at housing projects. Being based in Chengdu allows them to operate on this interim basis; because we try to set up our operation in the field, we have to be more conservative.

In the end, we did have an opportunity to partner with a Chinese NGO (NGODPC) already at work in a community that would have been a good starting place for HODR. They even have ten volunteers operating out of a tent base camp, much the same as HODR’s style. But as I wrote in our conclusion on hodr.org, we have a responsibility to provide a stable base and transparent operations to our volunteers, domestic and international. The relations we had in place didn’t give us the confidence to do this over a sustained period.

I often grapple with my Chinese identity, especially when I’m in China. People are puzzled by the juxtaposition of my self-conscious, lumpy Mandarin with my Chinese face, and their eyes are inevitably drawn to my scuffed sneakers (atypical footwear here). In each of my previous trips here, I’ve found parts of Chinese culture that overwhelm me, that make me lose my patience at this seemingly soulless, spitting, elbowing, loud, overwhelming crush of people and crazy lateral traffic motion and smog and development and narrow-mindedness and those terrible ankle-length nylon socks that women wear and blarghh!

And yet this time, I feel quite enamored with the place. I experienced incredible kindness and generosity from the people I aspired to help. I enjoyed candid, intelligent conversation with our tireless team of guides and translators. I respect the experience, insight, and energy of the NGO people (mostly Chinese) with whom I met. And I’m impressed with the ambition and dedication of the Chinese people. It was never difficult to motivate myself to keep going, to keep finding contacts and meetings and places to get excited about. It was difficult to know when to call it, to let it go. So many people were excited by what we proposed to do, were looking for a different way to help. My experience over the past six weeks has been so positive. I might go get one of those t-shirts.

And so, we make our preparations to leave China. I’m incredibly disappointed to not be able to launch a HODR project here, but I feel overwhelmingly touched, heartened, and exhausted by the interactions we’ve experienced here. Now I wish the Chinese people, ChineseNGO/operating INGO community, and Chinese government the best of luck for the continued earthquake recovery, and place my faith in the incremental, perpetual changes for the better which I do indeed see taking place in China. Zhong guo, jia you!

Stefanie

By decision in the 15th round, no deployment - John

2008-07-10T03:11:00.000-07:00

An endless supply of cigarettes were drawn from shirt pockets and from behind ears. For five hours straight most of my new friends from the local communist party of Tong Jian village were either smoking a cigarette, or lighting up a new one. Our walking tour took us through the low foothills of northern Sichuan province, a mere ten kilometers from the border with Saanxi province. To my surprise, we were a lot further from Chendgu than I had imagined.

Lunch was prepared in typical fashion for party officials hosting a guest. In the known history of Tong Jian village, one other foreigner had passed through. He two was invited to dine around a table packed to the edges with dish after dish of spicy Sichuan food while party officials undoubtedly asked him about his home country. Attempting to direct the conversation toward the degree of known damage to buildings and infrastructure, I was redirected by inquiries by the officials wanting to know if my golden hair and blue eyes meant I was handsome in my home country.

As I continued to assess the village with the Head Chief, the Deputy Head Chief, the Deputy Secretary Chief, the General Deputy Secretary and several other flamboyantly titled men, the kindness of these villagers reminded me of some of the times in Peru and Bangladesh that nearly brought me to tears. Sometimes, a man would rush out of a bush or from a construction site in tattered and dirty clothes, and began distributing cigarettes from his own shirt pocket to the party officials and often tried to give me two. Trying to explain that I don’t smoke was a foreign concept here. But so was my golden hair…I had the same thoughts I have had many times at HODR projects, that is, how can these people be so generous and seemingly so content with their lives when they live in such poor conditions? It has been easy to get caught up in city life again since we are based in Chengdu, but being reminded yet again that where life is simple, it is often sweetest.

A “minpien” (business card) goes a long way in China. A local contact, Peter, who enjoys near celebrity status within the ranks of the NGO that he works for has been helpful in navigating the complexities of working for an NGO in China. The minpien is to be given to the receiver standing up, and with two hands. The information should be facing the receiver. When receiving the minpien, one should receive it standing up, with two hands, slightly lowering your head. This particular detail is easy to master.

We have made over 130 personal contacts, visited 25 potential job sites, contacted 48 different NGOs, businesses and other groups, and 21 government departments, and we’ve held 42 meetings. We still haven’t been able to get to work, and that is due to other complexities a bit more difficult to navigate than giving and receiving a business card.

Quite simply, there is no infrastructure in which NGOs have to work. The government has no infrastructure for dealing with NGOs. One of the 42 organization we have been in contact with, Heart to Heart has worked in China for over 10 years. It took them 10 years to build up the necessary trust and relationship with the right government officials in order for them to receive official permission to operate in China. In addition, Heart to Heart has a healthy budget of several million dollars, and supplies professional doctors where they are in need. The wind would appear to be at their back. Not in China. Instead, Heart to Heart has packed up and gone home after a month of service in the quake area. This is not an easy NGO environment for even the most established.

In contast to H2H’s apparent solid foundation almost all Chinese NGOs are both new and unofficial themselves. Some had preexisting government connections which have allowed an increased ability to operate, many are still building these relationships themselves. I realize that it is a big ask to expect a Chinese organization or business to stick its neck out, risking its own connections and authority to operate to let us piggy back on those relationships to do our work. We have often been able to establish very good relations with a Chinese NGO or foundation, but when it comes to the small (but important) realities of operating, many back away. We need a local partner to help us get the proper paperwork for even the simplest of situations. A simple example is the police road blocks around the disaster area. They are random and sporadic, but none the less, they are there. An official road pass is needed to pass these blocks, especially as foreigners. On occasion, the officer is too busy sending a text message to pay close attention, but we have been stopped and told to return to Chengdu a number of times. Do not pass Go, definitely do not collect 200.

The problem is, even those individuals or organizations that have road passes don’t really know how they have them, or who to talk to in order to get one. If we are lucky enough to get a name and number of some gov’t official, the official is quick to pass us off to another official, often in a different city, with no relationship to the official we had originally been speaking to. The normal response is that “we don’t have the authority to make these kinds of decisions.” We’ve also spent days “official chasing” in person. The reaction is usually the same, they listen blankly while we talk about our work, then pass us on to someone else who has no authority either. Officials seem to think that they are imparting valuable knowledge on where we can get permission by suggesting that we contact the Sichuan Foreign Affairs department. When we explain that we have contacted that department in person, by phone, by fax and by email and again, we are told that they do not have the ability to make these decisions, they just drop their eyes to the ground and say that we should contact the Sichuan F.A department.

Cold calling Chinese officials and showing up unannounced at their office or place of work is not the proper way of conducting business here. Despite the fact that this is an incredibly devastating disaster requiring extraordinary actions by everyone involved, most officials are unwilling to step outside the ordinary boundaries of their job. There is a very strong and real fear of doing something wrong, and punishment from above is severe.

Our most robust strategy has been to really develop a relationship with local and national Chinese NGOS and foundations. I believe that they are receptive, willing, and eager NGOs who’s staff are people like myself, that do exist here. The desire to get to work, to apply the resources of the NGO and help people is as strong here as anywhere else. Finding that NGO or that foundation, or that group of businesses takes time. A group that is small enough to understand the realities and difficulties of putting hands to work in the disaster zone, but has the right level of authority to do so, is a rarity. Our most recent round of meetings has lent our most promising connections yet. This week, we had two invitations to spend extended periods of time in the company of partner Chinese NGO’s at their job sites. Both were interested in our ability to apply the HODR model in the communities where they are already semi-established. We thought this might be a breakthrough, but the reality is has been another high point in this assessment followed by the unfortunate low point marked by the reality and the difficulty of NGO work in China.

We have an invitation to install a few of us at the DPC camp in Wudu village and begin our work. We could do that. However, there is always the looming risk that someone from above will come shut down our operation. I don’t believe that DPC or most other NGOS realize the amount of work we are capable of doing by hand and I don’t believe they understand the bond that we ultimately form with the community. I fear that they might fear our presence once we were in full swing. We can slowly slowly grow our presence in Wudu, to the point of possibly declaring it a project. But at what point can we declare it a project? Is it after the first week when there are 6 of us who have worked unhindered for the week? Is it after the second week when there are 10 of us who haven’t yet been stopped by the police? Or is it after the third week when we begin putting volunteers into the kids center and start building a temporary home with 15 volunteers at our base?

I feel that these are the questions and risks that an individual or small group of individuals can take, but can HODR take these risks?

Well in the immediate future, you may find me and a few Chinese friends with some hammers, taking down some homes and building a temp home or two until we get kicked out of the area and asked to leave China.

I hope to see some of you guys in the near future.

John

Sidelined - Marc

2008-07-10T03:04:00.000-07:00

Barcelona, Spain
It was a mad scramble from the airport to the Chinese consulate in Barcelona. I had minimal time to get passport photos taken, find an internet café (to download a copy of my hotel reservation- which hadn’t arrived prior to my flight from Italy), and find the embassy. But, the next thing I knew I was in the queue……waiting, standing on the street for exactly 2hours 20 minutes before I was in front of an official. An official who promptly told me I needed to apply for my visa in my home country. He said that Beijing was constantly changing the guidelines and they could not help me. It mattered not what I said, the answer was “I cannot do here.”

I had complete confidence in Stefanie Chang, who would be first in, and John Hancock who would join her in the first week. Who better to lead the assessment, what better opportunity to follow the HODR model and have them step up into a leadership role. But how difficult it was to be sidelined, not there in the thick of it. A weeklong sail around the Mediterranean with Ian, a HODR alum from Peru and Bangladesh, would have to do.

Boston, MA
So, without a Chinese visa in hand I returned to the USA after having been away for 10 months (again). The plan was for me to use a visa expeditor for my application in Washington, DC whilst I attended our scheduled HODR June meetings. Me-mum met me in Boston and happily the two of us were welcomed at Tom Taylor’s (TTT) house. As much as I wanted to already be in China, it was great to be with the HODR team as the conversation formed ideas helping to shape our organization.

You know those scenes in the movies where the actor seems to stand still and the depth of field of the backdrop changes, almost as if it is rushing forward? Where everything looks roughly the same, but really, everything has changed? That was me in the front room of TTT’s house. I had a phone in my hand and my visa expeditor was on the other end of the line. He was telling me my visa had been rejected! He said, “your employer is H. O. D. R. what is that?” Without waiting for an answer he went on “you see right now it is a very sensitive situation in China” and the rest became a blur of words as my head spun with the implications. Rejected? #@&%, oh S%^&, that’s bad, really bad.

How do you get around that? Sidelined, again (maybe even relegated to an observer watching via youtube!).

David Campbell (DC) and I had daily skype calls with Stef and John and within the first 2 weeks a couple of things became apparent: 1. If we were to operate a HODR program in China the volunteers would be predominately (if not exclusively) Chinese. 2. The only way we could operate would be with approval, on some level, from the government. The first item, personally, took a little time to adjust to. It was hard for me to think of an international deployment without someone from Ireland or the UK or New Zealand or Cameroon or Canada able to join. I could rationalize it out by thinking of our volunteer base in Biloxi consisting of mainly Americans, so it seemed appropriate that an event in China is filled with Chinese. I had numerous conversations with HODR alum and even current volunteers in Project Cedar Rapids and they all felt that it was not an issue. But, I still turned it over and over. The second item was more problematic, access was elusive. Even the ability to determine who could give us permission for access was a mystery. Stef and John had meeting after meeting (unusual style for HODR, but these were unusual circumstances!) and finally hit upon a scheme of partnering with a Chinese NGO that had permission to operate. We would operate under their umbrella thus avoiding the need for a separate approval to be bestowed upon HODR. Seemed easy enough.

In China the team worked at local access and in the USA we pondered my visa issues. We made a trip to a local Chinese restaurant to have them decipher the characters written on my original application. It was here over a yummy dim-sum buffet (acclimatizing?) that we realized I hadn’t been rejected – I just hadn’t been approved! The embassy made a very deft maneuver; they sent my application back with no visa and the explanation was that I needed to apply in my home consular district. This sounds plausible until you talk to the visa experts, who tell you they had never heard of this. The experts say they fulfill applications for all 50 states. We thought the visa bureau had singled me out because I listed my employer as HODR and international disaster response personnel were not needed or wanted in Sichuan. If they want to shuffle me off to someone else – then fine. I will re-apply to my “home consular district” in Chicago. I found a helpful expeditor in based in Chicago and sent my application off with a few changes. 1. I was no longer flying to Chengdu (the largest city near the epicenter) now my flight only took me to Beijing. 2. I no longer had a reservation to stay in Chengdu, now I was booked in at a hostel in Beijing. 3. I no longer was applying for a 1 year multiple entry visa, now it was a 30 day single entry. 4. My employer was listed as Hands On as opposed to HODR (a little more obscure when you do a Google search!). With fingers crossed DC and I continued to skype with Stef and John daily to hear of their efforts.

Palo, Ia
It was a hectic time as I made a quick trip to Project Cedar Rapids where I stumbled around in an unfamiliar environment (USA HODR deployment!) and attempted to be of assistance to Ops Dir. Bill Driscoll, Jr. It is difficult to be in the middle of so much destruction but also moving to be around so many people motivated to help, it is the same world over, disaster after disaster. It was during my 1st 24hours in Palo that I received confirmation of my Chinese visa. Hurray!!! Off the sidelines!

Beijing, China
Stef and John set up a flurry of meetings for my 2 day stay in Beijing and I was fortunate to have Stef join me. We learned in the Philippines that without on the ground experience the meetings are not as productive. Within 2 hours of my flight landing I was meeting with the Director of Social Science Institute at Beijing University, Madame Zhang. It was my introduction to the difficulties faced by Stef and John for the past 2 weeks. In the first 4 minutes it was evident that she was unwilling (or unable, but I think more the prior) to help us, she didn’t even make eye contact (ostrich syndrome?). After a rather futile 30 minutes we excused ourselves and left for a dinner meeting.

Happily, the next two days were filled with great meetings and opportunities for partnerships, so much so that Stef left Beijing 1 day early to join a team on one of their assessments in Sichuan. It was with high spirits that I flew from the country's capital into the hard-hit province of Sichuan (along with the world’s tallest man – who was coincidentally on my flight. At 7’9’’ when he stooped in the aircraft his shoulders touched the ceiling!).

Sichuan, China
The devastation was as complete as any I have seen anywhere. Most of the homes/buildings are made of cement block or brick and the earthquake had been strong enough and long enough to knock almost all of them down. Those that remained were so badly damaged that they were no longer suitable for habitation. It was much like Pisco except not adobe structures and much like Sawit but on a more massive scale. The hillsides suffering from quake driven landslides looked like a huge hand had dragged its fingernails down them to scrape the vegetation away exposing the bare sandy soil underneath The asphalt roads were not too bad, but the more common cement roads were a complete mess, broken, upheaved, and somewhat passable in a bone jarring way. I walked among the residents of Wudu village and was moved by their spirit, their resiliency, their willingness to laugh. They had started to pick themselves up, to act on their own behalf, not waiting for someone to do for them. They had been told they would not receive a placement in a relocation camp, they would instead get 2,000 RMB to build a transitional shelter. They acknowledged that the help we offered had value.

But, the optimism carry over from the Beijing meetings was short lived. The roller-coaster ride that HODR had been on for 5 weeks resumed (I was just added to the car) as the assessment that Stef returned from was another dead-end. The same issues continued to surface even with willing Chinese partners: 1. Local government unwillingness to yield access for our model. 2. Local government unable to see value in our starting point service.

The other observation was………the response of the government.

Again, I have never seen anything like it. It is now 58 days after the event and the government has built 1.64 million (MILLION) temporary housing units! We viewed one prefabricated relocation community that had to contain maybe 6,000 units! But they are not all huge cities on flat open spaces – they were also found in very rural hillside areas, tucked into a recently flattened space accommodating 150 units. The technique is common to China, they house their construction workers and coal miners like this. It is steel framed room with a prefabricated wall and roof of Styrofoam insulation sandwiched between corrugated metal. They have a door and windows and are wired for electricity. They build them in rectangular blocks where they share common sidewalls. The blocks are all laid out with cement walkways, drainage, and communal latrines with running water nearby. You could see the work at various levels of completion, ongoing everywhere. Impressive, mighty impressive.

I had 3 meetings at the village level. At each one of those meetings I was told that the central government had issued a new mandate to “collectivise the homes.” The individual farmers will be moved to central, high-rise, apartment style homes. This would be a better use of the land and would allow the gov’t to have tighter control over the construction techniques used in the rebuilding.

It is not because of the government’s ability to respond, nor its plan to centralize, but because of its proclivity to both welcome assistance and deny it that we have decided to not deploy. We have found an environment that is not conducive for the type of program that HODR can offer. I honestly believe that we can morph a HODR deployment into anything we want it to be. I feel open to the possibility that a HODR deployment may not look like anything we have ever created before, but the at the core there are two things that must exist:

people in need must be served
HODR provides a stable platform on which volunteers can perform service

In this case I do not feel we can provide that platform. I fear that at some point a ‘higher-up’ official would take notice, ask questions we could not supply the proper authorization for, and then summarily ask us to pack up and leave. That is not a risk we can take, so we will sit this one on the sidelines.

Marc

China, Iowa, and some other stuff

2008-06-28T13:39:00.000-07:00

If you found your way here you're probably interested enough in www.hodr.org to know that we have an active and busy deployment going on in Iowa, with Bill Driscoll providing organizational leadership to benefit multiple towns to get effective use out of dozens of local volunteers.

Marc Young has been stymied for a while, but yesterday (June 27th) received his China visa, and will fly to Beijing Monday AM. He'll spend 2 days or soin Beijing making the rounds of NGO, UNDP, and business contacts that might be informative or helpful, then will head down to Chengdu.

Stefanie Chang and John Hancock have been in Chengdu for several weeks, and through the wonders of Skype Marc and I have been able to do mostly-daily conference calls as they work through many approaches to find the combination of access, need, and authority that might allow us to have an effective project.

Clearly there are sensitive geographic areas, and also some sensitivities re the need/benefit to have outsiders help with the recovery effort. Stay tuned, as I believe this situation will resolve itself within the next two weeks or so, though the outcome is uncertain.

If you have contacts in China that you believe may be helpful to us drop me an email at david@hodr.org and I'll follow up.

We had a pleasant HODR social event in Boston ( again, I know....) June 11th, including a helpful open discussion forum during that afternoon. About 20 were on hand for the afternoon, and about 50 for the evening.

Some take-aways: need more geographic balance, and weekend events would allow more traveling/workers to participate. So, we will have our next event in Portland, OR sometime in early October, trying to be sensitive to day-of-week. Eventually we would like to have a get-together about every 6 months, moving them around the country (-ies, any votes from NZ or UK?)

Comments at the meeting complimented HODR on our traditional transparency re financials, but suggested more openness around hiring, management decisions, etc. We'll try to use this vehicle, and maybe the volunteer newsletter, to accomplish that. The general sense was that we don't send TOOOO many e-mails, though we worry when we pack a deployment announcement on top of other stuff, but we'll try to stay sensible.

Another obvious suggestion ( duh) was to allow those who couldn't attend to send in questions, so we'll do that next time; also we'll be sending out a satisfaction survey ( are we becoming too corporate?) so we can tell the skeptics that "our people" really do like our minimalist model.

We have just completed a job search to replace Paula Ogletree, who made a personal decision to return home to Atlanta. Beca Howard, who's been a great HODR (and Persevere) volunteer and project#2 over the past 3 years will become our Communications Manager, and bring her experienced perspective to volunteer dialogue, plus fund raising activities with vols and with the public. Teryn Weintz is our first Director of Development, and will concentrate on introducing our model to foundations, corporations, and major individual donors. Our overall plan is to raise sufficient funds to increase our project capacity, eventually to the point that we have projects available, in major geographic areas, at all times! We'll talk more about those plans, and why, in future blogposts.

Lastly, Marianna, and others at the June event, opined that we don't have to update this blog every week for it to be helpful, but we'll commit to at least monthly, and see how that goes.

Keep your cards and letters coming, send info@hodr.org updated email addresses, and I hope to see you at a project soon.

davidC

small world

2008-01-24T23:05:00.001-08:00

(from marc in bangladesh)

a few days ago one of our volunteers ('allia' from australia) was walking through the market when she encountered another foreigner. being that this isnt common they struck up a conversation. after an exchange of pleasantries and contact information they bid each other farewell. i followed up with an introductory email referring him to our website and inviting him to join us at our base in rayenda any time he (or his colleagues) might be in our area. i am always eager to make people connections, always looking for a "fit" for HODR, always looking for "that meeting" (where we exit high-fiving over the future success of our affiliation).

i didnt hear from allias' contact. then, one day as i was working, my phone rang displaying an unrecognized number. it is risky to have a cell phone here. "friends" call. the typical dialog is as follows: "HELLO?, hello. THIS IS RAKIB, IS THIS MARC? this is marc.. HELLO. HOW ARE YOU?, i am fine, how are you?HELLO WHERE, HELLO, MARC? WHERE ARE YOU? i am working. WHERE ARE YOU? i am in rayenda. OK BYE. ok, bye rakib, OK BYE" in this case i answer, it is a western voice (easy conversation), the voice of clint (from america) and we have a great conversation. it seems we may have similar interests and establish a meeting time for the next day.

during our meeting we find more and more common ground. his "team" (banded together by profession but based all over) has been assessing in bagerhat division and especially sharonkohla upazila. they have small projects that they might be able to fund, but are concerned about implementation. they are wary of local contractors. their funding would go much farther if they didnt have all the labor costs and the difficulties over poor project management. the excitement is growing, there is eye contact that indicates a kinship. i ask about funding, connections, short term plans, long term plans... all of the usual talking points. there is a connection of kindered spirts who are striving to do the right thing, to help, to help those who need it most, without the need for credit or recognition, to do it because it needs to be done. it is eery and gooseflesh inducing.

in my mind i have a question, that with the right answer, will be the cement to hold a team effort together. if i was playing cards, i had an ace, or a one-eyed jack and it was time to play it.

"so, clint hanna, you mentioned working in cambodia, do you know piper campbell?" he replied "yes, she is a rising star and she is my boss!" my reply is obvious to those reading this....."piper campbell is your 'boss' and her father is my 'boss', he is the co-founder of our NGO."

small world, sometimes to the point of inducing tears.

Project Pisco goes out in style

2008-01-08T07:37:00.000-08:00

Like many things that HODR does if you didn’t know any better you would probably think we planned it all…well we did…in a kind of plan as you go spur of the moment kind of way.

106 volunteers gathered along side 25 Pisco community members at HODR’s favorite Pisco restaurant, site of our famed “Meat Club”, As de Oro’s.

Volunteers paraded down the buffet line with mountains of food somehow even leaving left overs!

We then held a different type of All Hands Meeting this one had a wireless mic and huge PA system. Individual volunteers introduced community members and thanked them for their efforts to help HODR and their community. Our local friends then addressed the volunteers (with Leah translating).

Some friends offered prayers, others tears but all expressed how eternally grateful they are for our work to help them recover.

Like “angels from the sky” HODR volunteers descended upon Pisco one local remarked. Project Pisco will close its doors shortly having hosted 500+ angels from the sky.

what do you think of......

2008-01-06T17:49:00.000-08:00

...when someone says 'playground'?
for me it is the children (everywhere!) and the equipment.
in bangladesh it is 50% different.

the children: laughing, running, screaming, climbing, jumping, shouting, pushing, falling, skipping, whistles blowing, teachers torso looming high above the beehive of activity.

the equipment: swings. big banks of swings set high on sturdy a frame with children pushing their feet up to dizzying heights and slashing backwards so high that the chains bow and then jerk at the fall. tall slides with their upright back and curved graceful chute where the shiny slide pan has been polished by the seatpants of the masses. teeter-totters where the heavier child (or children) has the lighter child (or group) dynamically outweighed and will only at their mercy push up to let the other down. and a dizzying carousel whose occupants are spun off only to stand staggering between nausea and hysteria. and monkey bars, and hopscotch routes, and tire traps, and basketball hoops, and, and, and......

but, there is no playground equipment here.
oddly, in our assessment of the schools, most of the headmasters dont even know what the pieces are. maybe they have seen photos of a slide or have visited dhaka and seen a swing-set, but they would never think of having such things at their school.

the things we take for granted.

marc, from the playground in, bangladesh

Briefing from Biloxi, and Happy Holidays to the HODR family

2007-12-24T13:09:00.000-08:00

post from DavidC. Had a great visit back to Biloxi, to celebrate the opening of the new Coastal family Health clinic, that so many HODR vols helped to make possible. While the funding for the facility came from the SSBG ( Social Srvices Block Grant) it's fair to say that the exposure Coastal got from the May 2006 Moss Point clinic opening, which dozens of vols contributed to, plus the sustaining work of the team that dealt with FEMA, IT issues, etc...all made this result possible. I was invited to speak, on behalf of all Hands On Folks, and recognized Nate Herrold, whose efforts were extraordinary, plus Kris Cyr, good friend Jack Blanks, and thanked the Coastal CEO, Joe Dawsey, for embracing our efforts. AND took the opportunity to name dozens of other volunteers who chipped in; yes I remembered you ALL!

Also got a chance to catch up with the REALLY LONG TERMERS, those HOUSA folks who are still helping out in Biloxi more than two years later. Amy, Jamie, Beau and Becca, Deubs, and others, who are living in Biloxi and carrying on great contributions.

Joined up with my "other family" to celebrate the holidays, and had a nice week with 15 family, including 6 grandchildren....

Will cycle down to Peru in January, then to back to Bangladesh in February.

To all the Hands On family, please have a wonderful holiday season, and thank you for being who you are!

David

hodr karma continues

2007-12-22T17:37:00.000-08:00

from marc in bangladesh..........

we have a house!! this one was a little more difficult (although it is always a challenge to find a facility suitable for a volunteer base in close proximity to a natural disaster area) because of the extreme level of poverty in the affected areas and the issues raised by access. BUT, WOW, 5 big rooms with 3 (yes that’s THREE) bathrooms and a kitchen AND a great out door balcony that is big enough for meetings and socializing! ok, so there is no roof, but we have paid up our lease in advance and the construction repairs have already begun. also, the family that owns the house and lives on the level below has 2 sons that speak pretty good english.
my concerns over water were valid, for most of the areas we scouted had no water available on-site, but our new volunteer base has 1 deep tube well for drinking water and 2 shallow wells for clean water suitable for bathing!
at our first inspection of the house we were told that the electricity would arrive in a day or two. "oh, i see, wow that would be great!" all the while we knowingly snigger 'yeah, sure power in a few days when we havent seen anyone working to restore the power grid. when we returned to express our desire to let the house we curiously found trees downed in the yard. when we spoke with the owner we were told the power company had come to connect the house. when we arrived the following day to sign our lease agreement .......sure enough, the house was wired in! after dark i visited our beautiful large balcony where i found not another electrified neighbor.
the next step is to get the base set up for volunteers to arrive. we have contracted a banner maker to hand paint our signage for the front of the volunteer center and hired a local woodworker to construct the first bunk-bed. it will be exciting to return from dhaka and see what they have created.

Turnover

2007-12-16T09:07:00.000-08:00

(Posted by Bill @ Project Pisco in Peru)

We have had a lot of turnover in the last two weeks. Many long-term volunteers (the name given to those who stay for 30 days or more) have cycled out as many new faces continue to cycle in. Project Pisco has had a baker’s dozen of veteran long-termers who joined us on previous projects but many here are first time volunteers. Most of the first time long-termers are coping with the departure of their friends; some of the veterans are coping as well.

One of the biggest challenges we face as an organization arises when long-term volunteers return to their “normal” lives, especially if they were a team leader as most end up stepping into a leadership role of some kind during their time with us. A long-termer’s knowledge base of how things work is traditionally the only form of institutional memory we have on projects beyond the operations director.

The turnover rate at Project Pisco, in terms of short-term volunteers is huge because we are in a heavily traveled area and travelers talk when they meet like-minded individuals on the trail. We have had over 430 volunteers walk through the doors so far. A truly amazing number over shadowed by only the volunteer’s impact within this community.

But the challenge of plugging new/fresh volunteers into the project falls in the lap of the long-termers and becomes a team effort to share the knowledge of how this and that is done and what time to do it etc.

The turnover rate presents challenges for our communal style living and the efficiency of the work day but another challenge, perhaps the hardest to deal with for a first time long-termer, is the “loss” of a friend and brother in arms.

On a personal level the significant turnover periods on projects can be hard to deal with. I remember when I woke up one morning in Biloxi during our Hurricane Katrina Relief Project (my first Hands On Project) and suddenly the “Tree Team” I had been working with everyday for 3 weeks had suddenly all returned home.

The realization that “this” won’t last forever and now I have to go and make new friends can be very strange and jolting. The veteran volunteer suddenly feels like the new kid in town because they don’t know anyone else and maybe don’t trust the “newbie’s” because they are new and “they don’t know...” The long-termer is faced with the decision to just leave because they don’t know anyone anymore or stick it out, make new friends and compartmentalize their emotions.

Yesterday long-term volunteer Amy touched upon this during her farewell speech at the end of our daily “All Hands Meeting.” Many of her closest friends left weeks ago but Amy stayed to oversee the rebuilding of a school, a project she started and has nurtured for months. She began by stating how she had debated whether or not she should even get up and speak to say goodbye because almost all of her friends had moved on and she didn’t really know many of the volunteers present. She decided to speak stating, “what I have to say I think everyone should hear anyway.” Man, I was glad along with everyone else that she decided to say goodbye to us and share her thoughts.

Her goodbye came on the 4-month anniversary of the quake that brought all of us together and Amy had been here since the beginning. She was Peace Corps Volunteer who had already been working in the area for 2 years prior and experienced the before, during and after of the devastating 8.0 quake. She described walking in the streets a week after the quake and seeing the sad state people were in and how survivors just wandered around not knowing what to do “... and then HODR showed up…and volunteers started pouring in. I saw the hope in people’s eyes when they realized that the whole world was fighting for them.”

Amy’s goodbye was poignant and reminded all that were present what the point was… to help, to give hope and to do everything we can. Her words rang true to those here for one day and those who have committed til the end. Her words will stick with us as the whole world fights for Pisco.

at the beginning

2007-12-14T03:41:00.000-08:00

from marc in bangladesh (who has crashed the UNICEF office to get decent internet access)

stef and i will leave tomorrow for our proposed area of operation. it is south and a little east of Bagerhat, the biggest nearby city. the closest communities are Morrelgonj, Rayenda, and Sarankhola. the spelling can vary because they have a character alphabet and the translations to a roman alphabet are not always uniform, so many of the maps and signs are not in agreement. there is no internet available in the sharonkhola area– there is no electricity or water for that matter! the water issue could be a major. the people here use ponds to collect water during the rainy season. they look like “the ole swimming hole” – but now, many have been contaminated by the storm and who knows what was in there anyway. even in the USA i am not too crazy about murky water…..in bangladesh it is downright scary! we may be forced to drill a “deep tube well”. in 4 days a crew of 20 guys can MANUALLY dig a 900 foot deep well! the output is sweetwater – clear, clean, drinkable! there are still many many details for us to work out. i will try and keep you posted as we have them sorted.

Bangladesh is a GO !... but why?

2007-12-11T05:25:00.000-08:00

We decided yesterday to go forward with an HODR project in Bangladesh, and I thought it might be interesting to see "behind the curtain" at our decision process.
Our first criteria, before we send an assessment team, is to try to measure the extent of damage, normally using destroyed homes as a key parameter, in the context of what is the local/national response capability. So when the California wildfires destroyed about 3,300 homes, and local response was strong, we decided not to deploy. In Bangladesh, with about 600,000 homes destroyed, and an equal number damaged, that criteria was easily met. The response capability is heavily dependent on NGO's ( non-governmental organizations, like CARE, OxFam, Red Crescent, etc), who are present in-country to deal with ongoing humanitarian issues, partly in anticipation that having a base there will allow rapid scale-up in time of disaster. SaveTheChildren, e.g., had 200 staff on the ground in Bangladesh BEFORE the Cyclone, so they have equipment and local knowledge that is invaluable.
Next we seek an area where the damage is concentrated, so that volunteers can be effectively engaged over a 3-4 month period with minimal transportation needs. Travel in these areas is slow, expensive, and exhausting, and to the extent we can do good work in a tighter area we're better off, and so are our volunteers. Our Peru project combined tasks in the immediate vicinity of our Op Center with several remote projects, which helped in several ways: by rebuilding irrigation canals up toward the mountains we helped the farm community, but also took the load of 30 volunteers at a time off our cramped central facility.

Next we look for a physical location that could support an Op Center: water, power, kitchen, and space for 50-100 people at a time normal parameters. We can modify an existing facility with additional showers, tent out in open space, and make do with limited communications(internet access) capability, but all weigh in the decision process. Next is volunteer access; how will they get to us. In BD, with limited English speaking, congested traffic, etc we are looking for a location that may be accessible from the local ferry system. This may mean a 20 hour overnight ferry ride from the Dhaka port area, itself a 2 hour ride from the airport, but all in all reasonable, if you're sensible and patient.
Another key ingredient can be supportive NGO's, particularly if we've had a good prior experience; UNICEF, Salvation Army and others falling in to that camp. We anticipate a working relationship with SaveTheChildren, who have been very open and supportive during our assessment process.
Much of our motivation is volunteer driven: will they want to come here, and can we make it safe, and productive. We're learning that our ability to make the trip a bit less daunting can swing the decision to motivate volunteers to come, so we aspire to make our communication, and logistics, as dependable as possible, and to maintain a safe environment, given the often chaotic situations we drop into.
Perhaps foolishly our last concern is funding - we really do go a bit on the " if we go, they'll support us" approach. In Peru, e.g., we spent about $125K before going out funds seeking, but that allows us to show what we are doing. We're starting now, off the demonstrated success of Peru, to raise the $100K+ that BD will require, so if you have suggestions, thoughts, or donations, please write to me at david@hodr.org or donate on-line at www.hodr.org

Lastly, we need the leadership of the local team will organize and run the operation, in this case Marc Young and Stef Chang. They have been in a dozen different communities, always watching for the combination of needs and characteristics that can form the basis of a successful project. While we've made the decision to deploy, they will pick the location sometime over the next 1-2 weeks,

We know BD will be a challenge, and that mounting two projects simultaneously will stress all our capabilities, but we think we will learn a lot, and be able to pull it off.
Please tag along with us......

Observations on departing Dhaka

2007-12-07T02:26:00.000-08:00

It's Friday afternoon, and I leave at 1:30 AM to start the 36 hour or so trip home.

Dhaka is the capital, and the international airport city, with about 8 million inhabitants. When I arrived it seemed crowded, impossibly congested, chaotic - after having a week out in various other places (Barisal, Barguna, Pathakouli, Parghtakata) it seemed comfortable to come back! Amazing how we initially resist anything different, then accept it on some future interaction, often wondering why "it" ever seemed so strange. Whether it's a new person, ski hill, country, game, language ( OK, for me languages are never easy to come back to) it's often best to have at least a second chance to experience before setting opinions.

Bangladesh, being almost 90% muslim, celebrates the weekend on Friday/Saturday, and the quiet Friday allowed me to enjoy Dhaka as a more pleasant city. The people are helpful, curious ( staring at a stranger is considered good form, and any westerner quickly draws a crowd just by being here), colorful- with beautifully colored saris worn in all parts of the country, always. And while many of the women wear full burkhas, and most at least a headress, I never sensed any female discrimination.

Corruption was a concern of mine, and it is much in the news here. A military government, with a Princeton PHD as CA Caretaker Advisor, has really cracked down. The heads of both major political parties, both daughters of former government leaders, are in jail awaiting trials, the mayors of several cities have been convicted and are serving time. The anti-corruption message has been ubiquitous in the discussions of disaster aid, now estimated at about $250 million, with $100 million from Saudi Arabia alone. The US has been most noticed with the support of helicopters from 2 ships offshore, ferrying relief supplies from major airport sites to remote villages. There is speculation re how soon the ships will leave, but it appears imminent as the food emergency supply chain seems to be getting in place. USAID is also a strong player, but normally through NGO's like SaveTheChildren.

It's so different being on site; you drop in to an organization like CARE or UNICEF, and strike a bond with the good people there immediately. Having connections from prior experiences " We worked with Cecilia from UNICEF in Peru, do you know her?" works wonders. Deservedly so. This is a people business, in every aspect. And since we need help with language here, also, great to have used our own network, with volunteers connecting the dots to get us to the right place, and people, directly.

Certainly there is substantial need here, though sometimes difficult to segregate the poverty from the disaster ( does it matter?). One of the "discoveries" from the five other disasters where we've deployed is that they hurt the poor so much more than... others. Here, with an average ANNUAL income of $400, the impact is, well, total. Our volunteers would have a strong message to bring of compassion , and competence. It would be a challenging environment, and there is a strong and well organized response, but that is needed just to get clean drinking water and a survivable food quantity to people. There is no effort yet to repair schools, help with homes, clear the thousands of trees ( I don't think there is a chainsaw in the whole country). So we will assess several more communities, search for possible locations, and make a decision as directly as we can. Marc and Stef will stay here until a decision is taken, then stay if we decide to deploy.

Thanks for following along, and may I suggest you think about reallocating some part of the holiday gifting to some sweet people who have little to celebrate, and could use a source of hope. www.HODR.org

Ooops, the BanglaDitch!

2007-12-05T23:50:00.000-08:00

Lots has happened in the last few days, some of it good. We travelled from Dhaka by overnite steamer, sort of a throwback, with a waterside deck cabin a whole $10 for the overnite 10 hour sailing. A bit chaotic getting through traffic to the ship, and discussing tickets, etc ( all signs in Bangla), but trip was fine, although arriving in a smaller city in the dark at 5 AM proved a bit challenging.

We've been off assessing multiple communities for damage, and to visit with NGO's, and local folks.

"Highlight" of the visit to Pathagharkata, during a walking tour from the village to some out homes, was my crash from the "log bridge" after the railing let go, plunging me about 8' into a nasty ditch, filled with.... well, let's just say a nasty ditch. After much scrambling, water splashing, etc I shed my clothes to don the Bangladeshi style sari-for-men, called a lungi. Very stylish.

We've visited 3 areas in depth, seen half a dozen destroyed schools and hundreds of homes, and travelled hours over congested Bangla roads; a mix of rickshaws, cars, trucks and buses that is an event in itself.

Effective meetings with Unicef, SaveTheChildren, Koinonia, and other NGO's indicate there is plenty of need, but also a strong international response.

One observation from the trip is the extraordinary success of the system of cyclone shelters that were built after the last major event, in 1991. That cyclone claimed over 140,000 deaths - the current toll for Sidr is about 4,000. Most people used the shelters, concrete reinforced, elevated buildings that can pack in about 1,000 people, and that are used as training schools or daycare in normal times.

It looks like I will cut my trip short to have some time at home to communicate our fund raising needs, if we deploy. We're getting very tight on cash, but this is a significant need, and I believe our volunteers would respond. Please be prepared to help out!

Off to Barisal, in the cyclone impact zone..

2007-12-01T12:27:00.000-08:00

If you're new to blogs, it's best to read from the "bottom up" since the prior postings constantly get pushed down in the stack, so the most recent is on top...

Marc Young and Stef Chang arrived midday yesterday, and after giving them A WHOLE DAY to recuperate we plan to start the trek down to Barisal, the major city in the impact area, midday.

I had gone out to the airport to greet them, but then got a call that I had an opportunity to meet with a prominent Dhaka businessman, Samson Chowdhury, so I bailed from the airport and "dashed" 50 minutes, across teeming Dhaka. Think of NYC (or Manila,Phnom Penh), but with a mix of rickshaws,( manually pedalled bicycle frontend with a two person seat behind), CNG's, (motorbike gadgets ( fueled with compressed natural gas, hence the name) with little seats, but lots of flexibility to weave in the traffic), baby-taxis, which are minivans you hop off and on and pay about .20/mile, and then full size buses, and some regular cars. Blaring horns, kids selling and begging in the clotted traffic, visual overload, but it all, eventually, works.

Mr Chowdury, who shares a birthdate with my wife ( thank you, Zoominfo.com) is Chairman of the Square Group of companies, which is the major conglomerate in BD. Properties include the largest pharma company, a beautiful and modern 350 bed hospital, banks,IT company, etc - but a pleasant, warm, active and effective man in his early 80's ! Oh, and his son is head of the government disaster management agency, so hopefully a useful visit.

When I returned to the hotel met with Marc and Stef, happy their grueling travel from Peru through New York ( for the BD visa) and Finland, India, to BD, finally completed. Great to have them here, since they immediately go into "..how do we do it..." mode, like figuring out how we'd tell volunteers how to travel, get visas, change currency, etc. We had an early dinner with a friend from a major UK humanitarian donor, TEAR Foundation, that I had met earlier at the hotel - he's here helping launch education programs for the hill tribes up near Bhutan.

This morning we'll have breakfast with the country director of SaveTheChildren , then introduce Marc and Stef to Dr Datta of Konoinia, then start our drive down toward Barisal.

Although there is an airport there the commercial flight traffic is shut down, and the driving trip south requires a ferry crossing, with the last ferry at 3 PM, so we've decided to get part way and spend the night enroute, somewhere. Our version of "a plan".

Two plus weeks after the event, and the international response, and local concentration, indicated that this is an extraordinary event, even by Bangladesh standards. The Bangladesh people we've met have been competent, caring, and considerate. We'll soon learn what life is like where the cyclone hit.

A friend from USAID who is down in Barisal located a place we think we can stay, and advised that the needs are great, and security seems OK, so we'll get there and start doing a look-around.

Very unsure what my internet access will be, but will post again as soon as I can.

End of first day, and we're off and...talking

2007-11-30T05:31:00.000-08:00

As much as could be hoped for, and maybe more. A visit with the USAID office in the US Embassy yesterday afternoon ( Hands On is an authorized recipient of funds from USAID, an option we have chosen to not yet pursue) gathered several useful contacts, so I had dialogue today with someone heading down to SIDR-land tomorrow, and an extended meeting with Dr Dennis Datta, the head of a local NGO called Koinonia, who had been down to see the needs first-hand, and has opened his organization to help us in many ways. He was referred to us by Rachel Peletz, a friend of our Stefanie Chang, and I believe will become an effective ally.

I also spoke with the country director of SavetheChidren, and he was coming to the local hotel I'm staying at to greet 2 new arrivals for his NGO, so we'll all have breakfast together tomorrow morning, Saturday. That's the way it goes, in terms of people helping with connections, and giving great immediate and straight information... things that just wouldn't happen from a distance. When you're HERE, they know you're worth spending some time with. Soon, HERE will mean down in the disaster zone, but I'm starting to gather information on that. A prime spot might be Barunga, but normal means of transport would be a 12 hour ferry ride from Dhaka. Another candidate is Barisal, closer to the only southern commercial airport in "the zone".

By all measures, and coverage, this is the worst natural disaster here in 16 years, and since they are used to recurring nasties, that's saying a lot.

The food ramifications are staggering. Rice is the bulk of their diet, and the crop is estimated to be 80% destroyed; it was about a month short of harvest time. Also, there won't be any seedlings ( a byproduct of the harvest) to plant for next years crop, without special imported assistance. World Food Program, WFP, just announced they will provide enough food for 2.2 million people for 6 moths, which is great, but demands major new logistical issues. Water remains a problem, since the 15 foot storm surge contaminated most wells, etc etc.

It feels like there is broad demand, and cooperation available. I'm looking forward to having Marc and Stef arrive tomorrow, and we'll all be fully engaged, maybe after they have a nap. They've endured five days of constant travel from Pisco, Peru to Dhaka, with convenient stops in places like NYC, Helsinki, Mumbai....

Thanks for tagging along with me, and I'll try to add more about BD (Bangladesh) as we go.

For some simple stats, it's a country of 150 million people, and Dhaka has 7 million inhabitants, the metropolitan area 12 million. When India was given independence in 1947 the muslim areas were partitioned off into 2 separated geographic areas, West Pakistan and East Pakistan, with a 1,000 mile long chunk of India between them. That didn't work out, and E Pakistan broke away and became Bangladesh in 1971, the name being the Bangla language version of Bengal, as in the Bay of Bengal, from whence come the cyclones. The country has a fascinating and complex history, best understood with a solid read at our favorite source, www.wikipedia.com .

On the ground (finally) in Dhaka, Bangladesh

2007-11-29T23:36:00.000-08:00

As expected, the trip was NOT uneventful. Flight to London on AA was fine, and I think I bagged a new HODR donor; will watch to see if JT from Netezza comes through!

Then switched to Virgin Atlantic for the overnight London to Delhi; and decided to personally pick up the cost of upgrading to "premium economy" , somewhat of an oxymoron, but I was trusting in the "virgin brand". Was settled, bugged twice by the airline crew to show my boarding pass, - then moved to "Upper Class" HODR karma, or just the result of a pleasant chat with the folks at checkin, or maybe being a brand new Virgin Club member ( probably a good quip in there somewhere). At any rate, this got me a laydown seat, andbetter wine... oh, this disaster life.

This benefit was quickly offset when my third leg flight, Delhi to Dhaka, went through stages of delay-cancel-resched 12 hours-later, all of which gave me a 21 hour stay in the very unglorious "transit lounge" at the Delhi airport (think '50's era linoleum, chairs, etc). I guess there opening a new international airport next year, so this one clearly hasn't received any upkeep.

Anyway, made it to Dhaka, our friends at CARE had recommended a nice local hotel, the Lake Castle ( maybe the Pond Commercial Building" would have been more appropriate, because you could almost jump across the lake... but it's nice, clean, and I got a good night's sleep.

Have to run to a meeting, things are going well on the cooperation front, and I have a meeting with the head of a local NGO just back from the frontlines....

Departing for Bangladesh

2007-11-26T18:15:00.000-08:00

My return to the blogosphere, after a 2 year absence For those of you interested in seeing archival blogs of my initial January, 2005 trip to Thailand in the wake of the tsunami ( maybe I should rethink that phraseology) the address is http://dncthailand2005.blogspot.com/ ;

after we launched our Katrina project I started
http://dnc-handsonusa.blogspot.com
but frankly haven't kept up since.

We've had great projects in Jogjakarta, Indonesia, and San Isidro, Philippines, both ably led by Marc Young. Although I participated in both ( got to keep my perfect record intact) Marc was clearly the prime mover, though as always the volunteers become the projects owners.

Looking back, in the Spring of 2007, I thought we had accomplished a lot, and proven the concept that if you make it easy for people to help one another, they'll do it. Recognizing this wellspring of untapped energy, and a strong personal belief that individuals sacrificing personally to help others has a special value, we decided to scale up Hands On.

A round of solicitation to a group I've dubbed the SuperFriends, who basically agreed to underwrite $200K in annual expense to cover 3-5 Operations Directors, and a Communications/FundRaising specialist, was completed over the next few months, and in the summer we added a third Operations Director, Bill Driscoll, Jr, and Paula Ogletree as Communications Director. This allowed us to have a stronger upfront message when we decided to deploy to Peru, and the additional exposure, and a well run project, brought over 300 volunteers within the first 3 months of operation - a phenomenal outpouring, and a powerful force in that recovering community.

We did assessments of several situations, a tornado in Kansas, the wildfires in California, and the serious flooding in Mexico in November, 2007, but felt they weren't "quite right".
Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh on November 15th, and caused devestation that matched Katrina in terms of houses destroyed. It's a challenging place to consider a project, since we can only be effective where volunteers want to be, so the outcome is uncertain. But with our expanded strength, and Peru in solid shape, it seems time to "take a look" at what we know will be a challenge.
I leave tomorrow at 9 AM, from Boston to London to Delhi to Dakha, arriving 27 hours later. Marc Young and Stef Chang will arrive, from Peru, about two days later. They are prudently doing the stop-in-NYC to get a Bangladesh visa approach, I'm trying the unapproved "visa on arrival" technique, which may become the "sorry, NO visa on arrival"... sort of like Charlie on the MTA for you Boston/Kingston trio fans.

I'm a bit nervous, but believe, as always, that we'll learn some useful things. And meet some new people. And hopefully allow more wonderful volunteers to do their thing.

Stay tuned

David Campbell Nov 26th, 2007