Editor's Note: At least 608 people were killed in Indonesia following two devastating earthquakes more than a week ago. Hundreds are still missing and authorities fear the death toll will climb as more bodies are found in the rubble.
Allison Zelkowitz
Program Manager, Save the Children in Indonesia
October 11, 2009, 11:26 pm
Our distribution teams had a packed day – with just 14 people, we managed to provide nearly 1,500 families with hygiene kits and household items such as a small gas stove, cooking pots and utensils, mosquito nets and blankets. Before I arrived in Padang eight days ago, I never knew how much planning, organizing and effort goes into providing needed supplies, or “NFIs,” as they’re called in humanitarian aid lingo. NFIs stands for non-food items (which I’ve always thought a rather vague term).
Besides selecting, procuring, storing, shipping and transporting NFIs, distributing them requires an intensive process. First, Save the Children staff members meet with community leaders, assess the damage in each community, determine each community’s need and help community leaders develop a list of recipients — the people who most need them.
The actual distribution of NFIs usually begins the next day, and that’s when it can get tricky. The goal is to make sure the right goods get to the right families, while maintaining a secure environment for those who are receiving items as well as for those who are distributing them. Crowds are sometimes unpredictable.
Editor's Note: At least 608 people were killed in Indonesia following two devastating earthquakes last week. Hundreds are still missing and authorities fear the death toll will climb as more bodies are found in the rubble.
Allison Zelkowitz
Program Manager, Save the Children in Indonesia
Blog entry, October 8, 2009, 1:30 am
Four more Save the Children staff arrived at our field office this afternoon in Pariaman district. I’m so glad they’re here! We’re now 16 people strong, allowing us to send more distribution teams to villages in need of help. Today one team focused on assessing new villages, and another team continued to distribute shelter materials, hygiene kits and household supplies – we’ve reached over 11,000 people, including about 6,600 children, in the last four days.
My team has traveled back toward Lake Maninjau, near some of the worst destruction, in search of a house and a warehouse to rent, so we can establish a new field office and reach children and families more quickly.
Nearly every road in this area is lined with people asking for donations. The worst part about this is that many of them are children. Not only are they at risk of getting hit by passing cars and motorbikes, but they’re also learning that asking for handouts is normal and necessary. And yet, what options do poor families and communities have? With their houses in ruins, and livelihoods lost, how else are they supposed to cope? Some people are picking up the pieces – they’re clearing away the rubble, arranging all their belongings under carefully hung tarps, and building tent communities with neighbors. But others seem to be just . . . waiting. Today I saw an old man sitting on a bench, staring at the road, surrounded by nothing but the debris of his small home. How long will he be able to wait?
Editor's Note: At least 608 people were killed in Indonesia following two devastating earthquakes last week. Hundreds are still missing and authorities fear the death toll will climb as more bodies are found in the rubble.
Allison Zelkowitz
Program Manager, Save the Children in Indonesia
Blog entry, October 7, 2009, 1:40 am
This morning I led a five-person team of Save the Children staff and volunteers to assess an area near Lake Maninjau, in northern Pariaman district. At first, near the main road, the damage didn’t seem that serious. But once we started heading toward the interior, up into the hills, we were alarmed by what we saw: skeletons of houses, splits in the road and metal roofs lying flat on the ground, surrounded by bricks and rubble. Most of the homes that were still standing had suffered irreparable damage, with huge cracks crisscrossing the walls.
Still many were occupied. People seem to have salvaged what belongings they could and moved them to areas that still provided some shelter. We passed two men sitting at a table in what must have been the dining room – now that the exterior wall had collapsed, it looked more like a patio. A number of homes were propped up by wooden posts, providing some support to the weakened structure. If another earthquake occurs, I fear they will do little good.
During this morning’s journey, our car was passed by a funeral procession. Six men carried a draped body; they were followed by at least 100 people. The crowd was winding its way slowly up the road toward us, so we stopped the car and waited until they passed. As we watched the group walk by, I was struck by how immaculately dressed they all were. Some probably borrowed clothing from friends or relatives. But many must have unearthed theirs from the debris, then washed and (somehow) pressed them. I find that rather noble.
Editor's Note: On Saturday, Typhoon Parma made landfall in Cagayan Province in the northern Philippines, dumping as much as 36 inches of rain in some parts of the nation of islands. The storm affected more than 338,000 people, displaced 85,000 and killed at least 16. Its predecessor, Ketsana, affected more than 3.9 million people, displaced more than 335,000 (many of whom remain in shelters) and left 295 dead. It dumped more rain on Manila than it has seen in 40 years, leaving 80 percent of the capital submerged. Fears of disease are rising and this morning, Parma, was still hovering off the northwestern coast of the Philippines with wind gusts up to 84 mph.
Efren Peñaflorida
World Vision, The Philippines
“Pagbabayad sa iba ang ginagawa ko’ (What I’m doing is paying it forward)
The smell is overpowering. More than a week after the rains from Typhoon Ketsana and Parma started pouring down on the Philippines, the city is still flooded. Mud and debris are everywhere; you can smell the stench of death as bodies decompose.
But the storms went deep into the Philippines, devastating rural villages throughout the country, too. In Cavite, my hometown, children and their families are struggling through each day. Many have lost everything. Imagine not knowing where you’ll sleep tonight? Or only having one pair of pants to wear because your clothes were ruined as the flood waters rose higher and higher?
I didn’t lose everything in the storms, but that first day the rains came, I was stuck in Manila, wandering through the flooded streets without food or water, and I was exhausted. The next day, after I realized how many people had lost so much, I knew I had to help.
Sunday, I went to church to thank God for the clothes on my back and the roof over my head. Then, I gathered up my team of volunteers at Dynamic Teen Company, and we started collecting donations to give out to our neighbors in need. DTC is an organization that I started with my friends more than 10 years ago to help kids just like me get a basic education, even when they can’t afford to go to school.
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Brad Blauser lives in war-torn Baghdad, where he doesn't earn a paycheck and is thousands of miles from his family. But he has no intention of leaving anytime soon.
For the past four years, the Dallas, Texas, native has been providing hope to hundreds of disabled Iraqi children and their families through the distribution of pediatric wheelchairs.
"Disabled children - they're really the forgotten ones in this war," said Blauser, 43. "They are often not seen in society."
Blauser arrived in Iraq as a civilian contractor in 2004, but quit that job last year to devote himself full time to his program, without compensation.
"There's no paycheck. It's not really safe here. But this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," he said.
An estimated one in seven Iraqi children ages 2 to 14 lives with a disability, according to UNICEF. Illnesses such as Spina bifida, palsy and polio leave them unable to walk.
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Program Note: CNN Heroes received nearly 9,000 submissions from 100 countries. A Blue Ribbon Panel selected the Top 10 CNN Heroes for the year, and over 1 million of you voted for your CNN HERO OF THE YEAR
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"We are an army," says Andrea Ivory of the group gathered with her early on a Saturday morning.
Armed with clipboards, leaflets and high spirits, the energetic Ivory leads them into the neighborhood, where they start knocking on doors. The mood is lighthearted, but their mission is serious: to save lives, one house at a time.
They're volunteers from the Florida Breast Health Initiative, or FBHI, and they are waging war against breast cancer. It's an effort started by Ivory, 50, herself a survivor of the disease.
Every weekend in the spring and fall, she and her volunteers - who include college students, senior citizens and suburban moms, all wearing matching T-shirts - fan out across low-income communities in southern Florida, educating women about breast health.
They especially seek out uninsured women age 35 and older, who statistics show are twice as likely to be diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer, and thus more likely to die from the disease.
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Following a faint trail through a dense patch of woods in Florida's Palm Beach County, Roy Foster is a man on a mission.
Foster, 53, is searching for homeless veterans - and he knows where to look.
Whether in a vacant lot behind a supermarket or a small clearing off the highway, homeless vets aren't that hard to find: One in three homeless adults has served in the military, and more than 150,000 veterans nationwide are homeless on any given night, according to the Veterans Administration.
Working with the sheriff's homeless outreach unit, Foster finds vets camped in tents or makeshift lean-tos, where he delivers a message: There's help for you if you want it.
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Drumsticks in hand, Derrick Tabb has found a way to transform New Orleans children from troublemakers to tuba players.
Tabb, wearing a gold chain and a baseball cap, doesn't look the part of a typical band teacher. But every weekday evening in the French Quarter, he beats out the rhythm on his music stand as students play their chosen instruments. In doing so, he gives them an alternative to New Orleans' rough streets.
"I tell everyone I'm competing with the drug dealers," said Tabb, 34. His program, The Roots of Music, offers free tutoring, instruments and music education to more than 100 students.
Reformed class clown Terrence Knockum credits Tabb with changing his life. The 15-year-old tuba player joined the band eight months ago, when he was failing in school and "heading up the wrong road," said Tabb. Today, Knockum is the band captain. He hopes to make music his career and teach it himself one day.
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At 16, Rhandolf Fajardo reflects on his former life as a gang member.
"My gang mates were the most influential thing in my life," says Fajardo, who joined a gang when he was in sixth grade. "We were pressured to join."
He's not alone. In the Philippines, teenage membership in urban gangs has surged to an estimated 130,000 in the past 10 years, according to the Preda Foundation, a local human rights charity.
"I thought I'd get stuck in that situation and that my life would never improve," recalls Fajardo. "I would probably be in jail right now, most likely a drug addict - if I hadn't met Efren."
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Program Note: CNN Heroes received nearly 9,000 submissions from 100 countries. A Blue Ribbon Panel selected the Top 10 CNN Heroes for the year, and over 1 million of you voted for your CNN HERO OF THE YEAR
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Behind the bar at a local restaurant, Doc Hendley leans in to hear his customer over the band. "You like the pinot? Cool," he says.
It's a seemingly average interaction, but Hendley is not your average bartender. As he pours wine in the United States, he's also helping to save thousands of lives on the other side of the world - and he's tapped into his regulars to help.
"[They] sit on the same stool, drink the same drink, pay the same tab every day. I felt like they really did want to be a part of something," Hendley says. "They just were waiting for somebody to bring that something to them."
That something is Wine to Water, Hendley's organization that provides clean water to people in developing countries through funds raised at wine tasting events.
Since 2004, Hendley has traveled to Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda and Cambodia, working with local communities to build clean water wells and sanitation systems.
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