Christian Relief Agencies Continue Pakistan Aid

|TOP|Following the October quake in Pakistan, Christian organisations like Tearfund and World Vision were quick to respond with aid, continuously raising money to provide shelter and food for displaced families.

Tearfund partner agencies are supporting over 30,000 families - some 180,000 people, providing shelter kits, winterised tents, tools, stoves and cooking utensils, blankets and mattresses as well as warm clothes and medical assistance.

The Tearfund disaster management team responded immediately by emerging into the earthquake scene and providing relief expertise and co-ordination to get emergency aid Their first aim was to help families survive through the winter.

The programme operating in the extremely remote Bagh area has so far provided relief for over 22,000 people (some 4,500 families), across six valleys. Here Tearfund has funded and distributed 6,000 emergency shelter kits - including essential tools and blankets, 4,500 latrine/washroom kits and hygiene and water purification kits. A public health promotion project is reducing the vulnerability of 6,500 households to disease. Detailed water surveys and repairs to water systems have also been carried out. |AD|

Jon Kennedy from Tearfund's Disaster Management Team has recently returned from the region. He explains: "Small yet effective measures that communities can initiate themselves are the essence of disaster preparedness at this level - a UK comparison might be rural communities spreading salt on roads from roadside stores. If we can support frontline villages then we can help to ensure that basic life saving measures, actions to reduce vulnerability, become part of community thinking to pass on for future generations. The people I spoke to are very keen to work on this. They tell us what they want to achieve and we work with them, developing their own disaster management plan".

In other news, World Vision has recently set about establishing 52 temporary schools and five new Child Friendly Spaces (CFS’s) in the remote mountainous areas of the Saraash and Siran valleys, having conducted livelihood, child protection and education surveys.

The international Christian relief agency is also raising awareness via radio., which is targeted towards families preparing to leave relief camps across Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP).