New phase in Catholic Church's biggest relief program begins

MANILA, Philippines — The Catholic Church, through its social action arm, NASSA-Caritas Philippines, started the second phase of its three-year P432.15 million rehabilitation program for supertyphoon Yolanda in April.

NASSA-Caritas Philippines National Director Rolando Tria Tirona, said the second stage of the rehab program, which covers April 1, 2015 to March 31, 2016, will be focusing on interventions geared toward sustaining resilient communities.

Tirona announced the beginning of the second phase during a visit to the country by Caritas Internationalis Humanitarian director Suzana Tkalec and following the completion of the initial phase of the rehabilitation program last March 31.  

"If last year we focused on building back structures such as disaster-resilient houses and on restoring the livelihood of those affected,  this year we will be empowering the communities further through capacity building and community-managed disaster risk reduction activities," Tirona said.

Among this year's proposed interventions are the formation of various people's organizations within the communities that would maintain and repair the shelter, water and sanitation facilities.

There would also be financial management trainings for livelihood beneficiaries, ecosystem restoration, and forging of long-term and deeper partnerships with local government units on disaster risk reduction management.

The program called REACHPhilippines (Recovery Assistance to Vulnerable Communities Affected by Typhoon Haiyan) aims to reach 184,750 individuals from the nine provinces worst-hit by Yolanda. These are the provinces of Palawan, Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Iloilo, Eastern Samar, Western Samar, Leyte and Cebu.

The targets this year include the construction and repair of 920 shelters, the installation of 28 piped water systems that would benefit 2,616 households, 220 protected wells for 4,097 households, and  sustainable livelihood for 7,312 households, among others.

Deemed as the most massive relief and rehabilitation program by the Catholic Church, NASSA-Caritas Philippines spent a total of P816.96 million, and was able to construct 3,117 houses for typhoon survivors during the first year of the program implementation.

"We make sure that every penny is well accounted for by institutionalizing financial monitoring and evaluation policies, not to mention a regular monitoring and evaluation of programs done both in the national and diocesan levels," Tirona said.

"This is our commitment to the donors, to every Catholic around the world who entrusted these funds to us," he added.

NASSA-Caritas Philippines represents the country to Caritas Internationalis, a global confederation of 165 member countries based in Vatican and is currently headed by Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, the first Asian president of the confederation.