WEEKLY SUMMARY

Field Operations

Since the last update we continued with our visits to camps in Aceh Besar District, just outside of Banda Aceh town. We visited four camps, doing rapid needs assessment in all of them and supplying one ton of rice, salt and sugar in one. There were 1731 beneficiaries. We have chosen the Lambisang Camp to start our child care activities and AMURT and AMURTEL are working together on this activity benefiting 275 children.

We visited the Ministry of Education who earmarked a primary school and a junior high school as urgent buildings to be renovated in time for the re-opening of schools on the 26th of January. There are huge piles of debris that prevent us from accurately verifying the strength of the foundations and estimating the repair costs. We hope to do that next week as we are just coming out of a four day Eid observance in Banda Aceh.

We also are looking at the possibility of providing boats to 15 fishermen of Neuheun Village, Aceh Besar District, who lost theirs in the tsunami. We were visited by Ananda Deva of Bali who took video footage of our work, Tapeshvar of Singapore who made a five minute PowerPoint presentation of our work, Adinath of Medan, Dada Divyalokeshanandaji and SS Manila. Dada Surya Prakash joined increasing the core group of volunteers to seven. He has already made contact with an influential Acehnese professor who is keen to assist us in liaison and PR work.

A five member AMURTEL team paid a one week visit and returned today to Medan. They visited various camps in Aceh Besar District and have promised to support the AMURTEL Didi Manika who is working together with AMURT on the child care centre in Lambisang Camp.

We sent a two man advance party to the ravaged West Coast today and hope to set up base camp there sometime next week.


The scene in all the coastal villages on the west coast of Aceh

We are attempting to source food sources from amongst the large NGO's and "fill in the gaps" wherever we see them. The food sourcing efforts have yet to yield any concrete results.

Needs:
UNICEF in coordination with the Public Works is mounting a solid waste management campaign and attempting to clean up Banda Aceh city. They are seeking volunteers. So overseas volunteers are welcome to assist us in that operation which is envisioned to carry on for three months. Bilingual volunteers are needed for office, communication and child care activities in the camps. Midwives for child deliveries in the camps are urgently needed! We may have a more accurate request for volunteers once our team reports back from the West Coast assessment.

Dada Shiilabhadrananda, Banda Aceh