Christina Simon. Photo: Sam Bolitho/CARE. It’s lusciously green all around us in this eastern highland community in Chauve province of Papua New Guinea. Deceptively and almost cruelly green. My colleagues from CARE Papua New Guinea and I have driven two hours from Goroka, the capital of the Eastern Highla... Read More
Women collectives discussing the donation in kind directly to the poor affected by the Tamil Nadu floods Devastating torrential rains in Tamil Nadu were a wakeup call that disasters can strike anytime, anywhere; even in a leading metropolitan city like Chennai where one could never anticipate floods due to heavy downpour. However, this incident... Read More
CARE India organized a national level conference on shelter in emergencies with its technical partners Christian Aid and Sphere India on 25th February, 2016 at Royal Plaza, New Delhi. CARE India in collaboration with Christian Aid has recently conducted a study on 13 post-disaster shelter projects. Together, we reviewed the effectiveness of some of the... Read More
Ms. Lakshmi standing in front of their partially damaged house Vallipuram a village Panchayat in Kanchipuram district of Tamil Nadu, consists of more than 10 small village hamlets. One of the habitations is ‘Vallipuram Yeri Karai’, which means Vallipuram’s river bed. This habitation consists of a... Read More
As the New Year dawned with hope and vigour, the remnants of the dreadful memories around the unprecedented floods, still lingered with most communities across Kancheepuram and Cuddalore districts of Tamil Nadu that I visited last week. Yet, I was able to see remarkable valour and determination in the locals to bounce back to normalcy. These are the poorest commu... Read More
A month back we had just returned from Kashmir. Now to even imagine the magnitude of the devastation there is difficult. I, along with my family visit Jammu and Kashmir every Eid without fail, and then we carry on an extended trip to visit my sister in law and other family members in Srinagar and Kazigund. We usually take the train from Delhi to Jammu, visit our ... Read More
Last month I had the opportunity to visit some of the Hudhud cyclone affected villages and urban slums of Vishakhapatnam where CARE is helping people recover from the impact of cyclone Hudhud. As I started my journey the images of loss and destruction that I had seen during my earlier visit post cyclone started flashing in front of my eyes. I was anxiou... Read More
I was visiting Nepal after three years and this time it wasn’t the same. I knew life would have changed after the April 25 earthquake, however, to be physically there in the middle of the devastation – it was heartbreaking. The victory tower of Nepal – Dharhara which used to stand tall at the center of Kathmandu was missing, the ancient Hindu te... Read More
Earthquakes, perhaps more than any other type of disaster, are a shelter disaster. In Nepal this is more the case than any disaster I’ve known – but the effects of the earthquake are far from simple, and the knock-on effects go beyond people just lacking a roof over their heads. During the second major e... Read More
Sameer is the English teacher in his village in Gorkha. He worries about his students’ psychological well-being after the two big earthquakes. Sameer hastens up steep slopes, and moves down small winding trails through deep river valleys. His flip-flops make a clacking sound, as he paces through his village in the mountains of Gorkha. Around ... Read More
Emmanuel Lan Chun Yang is the Regional Emergency Coordinator for Asia Pacific. He was deployed as part of the emergency response team for the Nepal earthquake as Field Team Leader in the district of Gorkha where the epicentre of the earthquake was located. Read More
20th May, 2015. 3am on Saturday 25 April 2015, the phone rang in my hotel room just outside of Atlanta, Georgia, USA where I was staying for a meeting with CARE USA colleagues. A big earthquake had hit Nepal; the country where I am Country Director and my adopted home. My first thought was for the safety of my staff, but mor... Read More
