Six months ago today, Super Typhoon Haiyan (named "Yolanda" in the Philippines), the strongest typhoon believed to have ever made landfall, slammed into the Philippines. There were 14.1 million people affected, with 4 million displaced, and losses and damages totalling an estimated US$14 billion. More than 6,200 people died, and thousands more are still missing.
The world watched as Haiyan tallied horrifying statistics on the extent of devastation and destruction. Typhoon Haiyan struck as the Philippines, the most storm-exposed country on earth, was still reeling from Typhoon Bopha and from a 7.1-magnitude earthquake, which struck a month before Haiyan.
Even now, as we take stock of the incredible work that has been done in a very short time, the 2014 Pacific cyclone season is just beginning. An average of 20 typhoons slam into the Philippines every year. If a major storm were to hit the affected areas now, we could be looking at a potentially much worse humanitarian situation.
The experience of Haiyan sealed what many development organisations have been asserting for years: that disaster risk is most real to the poor, marginalised and vulnerable sectors of society, including women and children. These are the people who do not have the social safety nets and capacities to protect themselves and recover, and are therefore left to suffer the most during disasters and face the higher risk of losing whatever is left of their belongings — if not losing their own lives. In Haiyan’s story, this translates to 2.6 million poorest households, and 5.9 million children.
In the crucial weeks after the typhoon and leading to the sixth month mark, Plan International quickly mobilised resources around the world, channelling funds and donations to the Philippines to contribute to the response and recovery process. The appeal has now generated more than $50 million, one of the biggest contributions from children-based INGOs to date.
Plan Philippines is supporting seven sectoral areas — protection and gender-based violence; education; health; nutrition; water, sanitation and hygiene; early recovery, livelihood and agriculture; and shelter — including engagement in inter-agency clusters and partnerships. To date, 143,171 households spread across 43 disaster-affected municipalities have already benefited from Plan’s response and relief efforts — much higher than the planned coverage of just 22 municipalities and 75,000 households.
The extraordinary resilience of the Filipino people matched the world’s outpouring of support. On Plan Philippines’ end, harnessing our partner-communities’ creative energies and supporting them throughout the process of self-recovery became the focus of our response and recovery work.
Essential in the recovery process is the inclusion of children: to see them not just as end-receivers, but as active participants in the process itself. We are also engaging children in more creative ways, providing them with the right tools and channels for communicating what they hold as important, and therefore the opportunity for them to become agents of change.
The experience of Haiyan brought many of us development and humanitarian actors face-to-face with the reality of a "new normal" now unfolding before us, redefining what used to be a business as usual approach to development. Now, there is only the standard of quality projects with long-lasting benefits that help communities prepare for future challenges — where the only way to build, is to build back better and safer.
In the first few weeks after Haiyan, I met farmers not begging for food, but for seeds to be sown so they can grow and harvest their own food. I have met children, who, despite experiencing severe trauma and loss, have by some miracle kept the twinkle of hope in their eyes.
I am always amazed by the positive attitudes of children in disasters and by how they cope with very difficult circumstances. Seeing children living in dangerous circumstances like these breaks my heart. But it also strengthens my resolve and that of my teams to persist in our work to contribute to a better quality of life for them.
The process of rebuilding will take years, and more medium-term investments in livelihoods, education and disaster risk reduction remains to be done. But what keeps us moving forward is that unbreakable Filipino spirit; that unique brand of resilience now known the world over.
Haiyan taught us many lessons in channelling our development and humanitarian efforts in more sustainable ways. Our beneficiaries taught us something much more invaluable — that in the face of a disaster, we do not give up hope, because, life, after all, goes on.
Carin Van der Hor is Country Director of Plan Philippines.