Email this page

Relief Updates

Building hope after the tsunami

A woman and her granddaughter at an AFSC/SHEEP health station.

People’s generosity in response to the tsunami has been extraordinary. AFSC received more than 17,000 gifts on the web site and through the mail, ranging from children’s savings and Christmas money to large foundation grants. The total amount received, now more than $4,000,000, means that in addition to relief, AFSC can offer substantial longer-term recovery assistance to people in tsunami-stricken areas.

In Indonesia, AFSC has an excellent local partner in the Society for Health, Education, Environment, and Peace (SHEEP). SHEEP staff members bring experience in disaster relief and working with the poor and marginalized. Many of its team members are Aceh university students who were studying in Yogyakarta, where the group is based.

Long-term work underway

Initially, AFSC worked with SHEEP to send medical teams to devastated Aceh Province. AFSC and SHEEP have since expanded their focus to providing assistance in schools and rebuilding homes.

To date, four SHEEP volunteer teams have been sent to more than 17 villages around the devastated coastal city of Meulaboh. The teams stay an average of 2 ½ weeks in the field, providing medical assistance to internally displaced persons (IDPs). 

Thanks to the work of the volunteer teams and the SHEEP office in Yogyakarta, a transit post established in the city of Medan shipped more than 40 tons of supplies to Meulaboh within a week of the tsunami. In Meulaboh, a health station was treating up to 800 people a day. By mid-January, SHEEP reported that the humanitarian post in Jujung Pateha was serving 8,500 displaced people.

Housing and education

School children drawing their homes and neighborhoods.

A fifth team, composed of professionals only, is now in Meulaboh. They will stay in the region for one month to begin the rehabilitation phase by planning housing construction and other projects. SHEEP volunteers are already assisting teachers in tent schools and constructing model housing from coconut wood that can be disassembled and moved to new permanent sites if necessary.

The people of Aceh were inspired to learn from AFSC staff that the help they are receiving is coming from many ordinary people like themselves. The outpouring of generosity and concern has been very meaningful to the Acehenese and created a sense of solidarity and connection between them and the rest of the world.

^ Top of page