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NAHB Funds Transforming Lives of Tsunami Victims
More than a year and a half since South Asia was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami, the Home Builders Care/National Housing Endowment-Tsunami Shelter Fund is seeing results from its efforts to support reconstruction as well as training to enable communities to participate in the rebuilding, Bob Mitchell, 2000 NAHB president, told the association’s board of directors in Salt Lake City last month.
The Shelter Fund was directly responsible for building 71 homes housing more than 200 people in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, Mitchell said, the first permanent homes to be built in the village following the disaster.
“We were the first on the ground, providing housing for these desperate families,” he said. “We can proudly say that home builders are leaders, both in our own communities and those thousands of miles away.”
The project was spearheaded by Shelter for Life, which, along with Habitat for Humanity, was one of the two organizations chosen to receive the NAHB relief funds.
Because of NAHB’s immediate and substantial donation to Shelter for Life, Mitchell said that the charity was able to attract more money to the local rebuilding effort, and to date the association’s donation has been leveraged into another $100,000 in contributions, which will enable another 50 homes to be built.
In addition to providing physical structures, Mitchell noted that the rebuilding “has provided a paying wage and the dignity that comes with employment to workers whose jobs were lost as a result of the tsunami.”
Of the donations to the Shelter Fund, more than $47,000 was spent locally to pay for labor and $184,000 in materials were purchased.
A donation of $75,000 from NAHB and the National Housing Endowment to Habitat for Humanity International’s affiliate in India has created the NAHB Home Builders Care Disaster Response Technical Center in Kanyakumari, a region in which the tsunami killed 798 people in 33 coastal villages, resulting in the loss of more than 14,000 jobs, Mitchell said.
Since it was created in May, the center has been facilitating repair and renovation of homes along the coast, where 6,500 homes were destroyed or damaged. To date, with the manpower of local workers who have been given construction training, 1,510 out of a planned 4,045 homes have been completed.
The center in Kanyakumari has run 45 programs that have provided 549 participants training in construction and other employable skills. A component of the training focusing on women who lost their husbands has taught masonry skills to 35 widows who have worked on repairing 211 homes in two villages, Mitchell said.
The center will also train 100 women and youths over the next three years to be construction supervisors on small residential contracts. Within five years, the goal is to train 600 supervisors.
“The work done and the lives changed through our leadership embody the very philosophy of Home Builders Care,” said Mitchell, “and I am incredibly proud to be part of this outstanding effort.”
For more information, e-mail Niki Clark at NAHB, or call her at 800-368-5242 x8061.
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