High School.
Unfortunately, in Indonesia, there's just so many disasters here all the time.
It's a bit kind of old news.
When something happens here, it's not that interesting to people, it doesn't really
mean much anymore.
Oh, I've heard that before, you know, is that that disaster or that disaster?
You know, like, you have, you know, five plus on the Richter scale earthquakes, you know,
every week or so at this point, we have some of, you know, the most disaster prone areas
in the world by far.
And you know what?
With
this particular disaster, I think it wasn't a very well-known disaster. I have spoken
to many, many people since then and talked about the work that we're doing up in Padang
at the moment. They're like, what? Why are you working in Padang? What happened? You
know what I mean? Even up till now, they don't even know that more than a thousand
people died. More than 200,000 buildings came down. It was a major disaster that happened
up there, which got pretty close to zero media coverage.
I was at school in Ketimbun this morning. The location was moved here. I was
at the school's shelter. That morning, I was cleaning the school's apartment. After
11 o'clock, I moved to the house. Then, until 3 o'clock, I went to bed. It was
comfortable. At 4 o'clock, I woke up my son. It was like a cave, a cave. At 5 o'clock,
I went back to the house and the fire started. That was the distance between the house and me,
100 meters from the house. The fire started right after the fire started. I couldn't
save my son. My son was 2, my wife was 1, Ketimbun. Then, at this school, my brother
was 2, Ketimbun. There were 7 people. I was the one who saved my son. Then, until now,
my thoughts are that I want to move from here and go back to where I didn't know.
Because of my work, I was never used again at school. If the fire broke out,
Ketimbun would have collapsed. My house was finished. My car was never used again at school.
I was never used again at school. That's when I got stuck in a hole. I didn't know
what I was going to do.
Mr. Gempa, especially in the area of employment, infrastructure, irrigation,
and housing. This is very difficult. On the other side, with the
houses being damaged, the life source is very difficult. It's very difficult to
get back to the house. With the economic source that we can't say, it doesn't
work. This is the impact, especially on the lives of the people.
The three basic stages of disaster management are the stage before disaster happens.
Sometimes it's called preparedness. Also sometimes it's called mitigation,
which is reducing the chance of that disaster happening, what can be done,
risk reduction, these sort of things. Then there's the actual time of response
when the disaster occurs. There's the immediate moments after it happens,
how the community responds to that moment. Then following that, there's a stage,
usually, of humanitarian aid and assistance when people can't fulfill their basic
human needs, like food and shelter and medicine and that sort of thing.
Then there's a stage called recovery and rehabilitation. That's when you're
looking at putting people's environments, homes, livelihoods, economies, schools,
etc. back together. You hope that at that point, once that process is finished,
that community is ready to sustain itself properly on an ongoing basis.
What you see in disaster zones all over the world, not by any means unique to
Indonesia, is that people with a lot of resource, a lot of money, a lot of very
good intentions who really want to help will come in from other countries or other
areas with all the best intentions of, we're going to help rebuild your schools,
we're going to help rebuild your livelihoods, so on and so forth, but they
don't really speak the language. They don't really understand the intricacies
of the local economy or how it functions. They don't know that something like,
for example, correct culturally appropriate clothing is way more important
than panadol or whatever. Do you know what I mean? Every culture has its own
standards and its own belief and feelings, real feelings that this is the
most important thing. There's often a lack of dialogue between the people
who are coming to help and the people who are the recipients of that help or
the beneficiaries they're called for these programs. Again, if communities
can be a little, not a little, a lot more involved in the process of designing
their own recovery and being clear about what it is that's prior to them,
we found that A, this really increases efficiency. You don't waste nearly as
much money on the ground and speeds up the process and also increases
accountability because it's hard to monitor something you don't really
understand. So if you don't really know what's needed or how the process
works or so on and so forth, you have these assumptions about what you think is
right and that's not right and meanwhile the community is going, yeah, it's way
right, that's exactly what we need.
What I see is that after the 30th of September in Sumata Barat,
if the international organization immediately gives help, there will be
many protests, handicaps such as the buddha, Bahasa, this is not easy,
this is a closer approach to shelter in Sumata Barat, now it is felt by the
international organization, there are many problems they do, they do
themselves in the field, many can't and are being attacked by the
There is also a lot of criticism from the people, there is a lot of racism, there is a lot of issues, there is a lot of religion, there is a lot of this.
I think this will reduce the work with the local LSM.
Because the local LSM, I think, will understand the culture, the culture of a place, there is a religious, a strategic approach to community, language and so on.
This will help.
And there is no need for international sources to recruit translators, there are visitors, there are many things, there is a lot of money to spend there.
So I think it will be better to partner with the local LSM, be able to work together, or maybe give money in the monitoring system of the local LSM.
That's where the strategic side is.
The local NGO actually has a lot of support in helping the community.
Because when international NGOs come, they also give help, but still in terms of recruiting, this community needs help, this community can be helped.
But when we believe or encourage local NGOs to do programs in the field, they know for sure what the character of this community is,
then how close it is to the community, so that the program that is named, the strategic strategy is right, and it can be hoped for the continuation.
Because also one thing that is most important, local NGOs are always here.
International NGOs, they come, give help, after finishing the program, they go.
But what about the continuation?
You know our major focus for emergency response is working with local NGOs to help people that are probably not going to get help otherwise.
So that will be communities in areas that are quite remote and hard to get to, or smaller communities that don't kind of fit the mandate that the larger organizations need.
You tend to find in disaster zones that the international have sometimes quite a surplus of goods to distribute, but they have a limited capacity to map out where that's really needed.
In terms of these remote areas, you need to go on motorbike or walk part of the way, or the community has to walk seven kilometers to pick that aid up.
This is the role that the locals really play, they come in and find those gaps, and fill those gaps, and that's what they're focused on, and that's what they really care about.
They really care about equity, it's really important to them, they're actually part of that community.
These local NGOs, they live there, they were born there, they're from there, so if this community doesn't get help after everyone's left,
they're going to get in trouble because you're a local NGO, you're supposed to be looking out for us.
There's that kind of personal accountability thing, there's two sides to accountability, there's the paperwork, financial accountability,
but then there's also the human accountability that people need to be treated fairly.
It's very, very hard to do that in a big disaster, but there's usually not enough to go around, so you got to choose your battles kind of thing.
So by having someone who's actually from that area involved in that choice-making process, your chance of having it done properly is a lot higher, actually.
Local NGOs have clear vision for the community.
They have a clear vision of how to help the community, in accordance with the local context.
They have a good spirit to create their own stories and visions, but we're still lacking in networking,
so when there's a new approach, when there's a new problem, we might not be exposed to the outside world.
Local NGOs have done various programs starting from health, women's programs,
economic development of the community, life and so on, but when networking with international NGOs or the outside world is not developed,
then what we do here becomes unheard of, even though we've already done it.
Thank you.
