Red Cross’ housing project for Yolanda survivors nearing completion

More than 66,000 families now have safer, more disaster resilient homes in typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) affected areas, as the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) has already completed 86 percent of its target number of homes to be built in its shelter project under its typhoon Haiyan recovery program.

As of date, a total of 66,011 families were provided shelter out of the target 80,203, which is targeted to be completed until the end of 2016. This is the largest ever shelter assistance that the Red Cross has provided in any post-disaster operations locally and globally, in terms of number of houses built and amount of shelter assistance provided.

“What we are doing is not just building shelter for the families affected. More importantly, we are giving them back their dignity, which is why families are involved from the beginning in the process of building their homes,” said Richard Gordon, chairman and CEO of the PRC.

In building shelter, the PRC involves the community in all aspects of the building process. The beneficiaries themselves were part of the consultations regarding designs and plans for the shelters that the Red Cross and its partners were to build for them. Beneficiaries are even involved in the actual building of the houses.

Houses built trough the PRC housing project were built employing the “build back better” principle for disaster resilience and have been proven to withstand some of the strongest typhoons that came after Yolanda.

The shelter project covers the provinces of Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Cebu, Eastern Samar, Iloilo, Leyte, Palawan, and Western Samar; as well as the cities of Bogo, Ormoc and Tacloban.
“Providing shelter for families affected by Yolanda would not be possible without the support of our partners, private companies who supported our shelter program, and our partners in the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement,” said Gordon.

The housing project is supported by PRC’s partners in the International Red Cross Red Crescent (RCRC) Movement, composed of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and several National Societies.

RCRC National Societies involved in the Haiyan housing project include Finnish Red Cross, Spanish Red Cross, German Red Cross, Hong Kong Red Cross, Taiwan Red Cross, French Red Cross, Japanese Red Cross, Norwegian Red Cross, British Red Cross, American Red Cross, Australian Red Cross, Netherlands Red Cross, Palang Merah Indonesia (PMI) or Indonesian Red Cross, Qatar Red Crescent Society, Swiss Red Cross, and Bahrain Red Crescent.

PRC’s private partners that have contributed to the housing project include Air Asia, HSBC, CUBE, Citibank, and AusAID.