The
challenging business of building a Red Cross national society
from scratch in the world's newest nation was moved a step further
in East Timor this week with the Red Cross continuing to provide
assistance to hundreds of victims of flash floods.
More than 20 volunteers from the East Timor Red Cross - Cruz
Vermelha Timor Leste (CVLT) have carried out a vital distribution
of relief goods to some 40 families (250 people) in a district
in the southeast of the country - Maliana - which was hard hit
by floods at the end of last month.
This inspiring team of young people, well organised by East
Timor Red Cross managers, first delivered 30 sacks of used clothes,
donated by the Singapore Red Cross, to the Convent of Santa
Cruz in the provincial capital, where nuns will sort and group
before the volunteers distribute to the needy families.
Then it was onto the village of Cailaco, an hour's drive away,
where families awaited receipt of relief kits, including kitchen,
washing and hygiene items. The results of weeks of training
were there for all to see, with the distribution carried out
faultlessly, based on an assessment conducted in the area a
few days earlier.
Seventy-year-old subsistence farmer, Seraphim Mario, living
nearby with his wife and seven children, said: "It was
terrible when the floods came, rushing through our house and
completely destroying the kitchen." Even more disastrous
for Seraphim was the loss of his crops on which he and his family
depend for survival: "We are having to buy our food now,
so this help from the Red Cross is crucial for us," he
added.
The Red Cross assessment in Maliana, found that families had
not only lost homes, belongings, livestock and crops, but were
now so short of food that they were only eating one meal a day.
And even then, what food there was had to be mixed with ground
palm tree fibre to make rations stretch a bit further.
As a result, the East Timor Red Cross is also hoping to distribute
food as well as vegetable and rice seeds to the affected families
for three months, to tide them over to the next harvest. But
the assistance is needed quickly as the planting season is just
underway.
"The East Timor Red Cross is coming of age rapidly,"
says Federation Representative in Dili, Olav Ofstad. "Today's
distribution has not only provided essential relief for people
on the margin of day-to-day living, but has also underpinned
the society's growing role at the community level, and thus
generated some important visibility and profile across the country
as a whole. I really hope sister Red Cross and Red Crescent
societies will be generous in supporting this work and so enable
us to really help the villagers who truly are among the poorest
of the poor," he adds.
Ofstad has been working with the East Timor Red Cross since
October 2003 and is primarily charged with supporting the society
in its development towards recognition and formal admission
to the International Federation at the 2005 general assembly
in Seoul, South Korea.
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Seraphim
Mario lost the crops on which his family depends: "Help
from the Red Cross is crucial to us," he says(p11070)
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A
villager signs for receipt of his Red Cross family kit
during a well-ordered distribution in Maliana province
(p11072)
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Olav
Ofstad, Federation representative in Dili, pictured with
East Timorese flood victims (p11071)
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