Hands On Disaster Response is now All Hands Volunteers

HODR Project Rayenda has come to a close.

This was a project that stretched the boundaries of our organization and the volunteers who participated in it. The country is desperately poor, struggling with a “caretaker” government, transportation is difficult, it is logistically complicated, and all of these conditions were exacerbated by cyclone Sidr on 15 November, 2008. Even given these conditions, in true Hands On fashion we were able to find projects that fulfilled a need in the devastated region of Bagerhat Division and jumped in to help. The following is a recap of Hands On Disaster Response’s last weeks of Project Rayenda.

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In the last 5 weeks of Project Rayenda HODR volunteers erected 5 playgrounds and built 5 HODR Half houses!

In partnership with Save the Children UK we designed, pre-fabricated, and installed playgrounds for 5 of the public schools in Sarankhola Upazila. A tremendous effort was put forth by a dedicated team of volunteers to pre-fabricate entire playgrounds at our base with amazing accuracy. Install teams of 8-10 volunteers then traveled to remote villages and lived in school rooms or in cyclone shelters during the onsite builds. These teams dug holes, painted, assembled the equipment, mixed and poured cement, and applied the finishing touches of each 10-part playground. Adding excitement to the mix were the crowds of literally hundreds of curious locals who gathered to watch the volunteers at work. Each install team established an amazing rapport with their host community, frequenting local tea shops, encouraging local participation in the builds, taking part in after-work volleyball or cricket games, and spontaneously organizing community sing-alongs. The five playgrounds that we leave in Sarankhola are not only much loved by the children, they’ve become gathering places for adults as well.

In a tremendous surge of effort, regardless of soaring temperatures, our volunteers wrapped the HODR Half program on a strong note. Houses 10-15 went up in record time and the increased speed was matched with increased quality! The volunteers’ dedication has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated by the locals – Bengalis admit that they themselves have no interest working on a hot tin roof in the peak heat of the day! The HODR Half program marks HODR’s most ambitious self-contained housing project to date. The needs assessment, design, and building of the homes has developed the capacity of the organization while expanding our volunteers’ skillsets.

Celebrate Good Bye
In a sea of love the volunteers shared a goodbye celebration with about 250 of our friends from Rayenda. The evening included girls singing the national anthem, traditional dancing performances, local singers, and 2 performances from HODR volunteers. There were some speeches and then the highlight of the evening – a 15 minute slide show set to music from the Bangladesh Idol! It was so fun to see the response as photos of our work and our volunteers and our community people appeared on the stage backdrop. I was told that most of our guests had never seen such a thing. This was followed by our volunteers serving a box meal to all the attendees. Although there was no choreographed dance routine by the volunteers this year – it was still a wonderful celebration.

Lottery and Distribution
It has become a HODR tradition to distribute its assets when it closes down a deployment. The volunteers completed an exhaustive inventory and assembled a list of the 95 most needy families in our area of service (not including the recipients of a HODR Half). On 13 April the invitees (all winners) arrived on schedule and in a very orderly fashion came into our yard and drew a single slip of paper from our mini HODR Half scale model. They were then lead to Rajib where he read from the prize board what they had won and the party began. There was clapping, smiles all around, and even some dancing! It was fabulous. The joy continued on 15 /16 April when the recipients claimed their winnings from piles of wood, sheets of tin, kitchen items, beds, toolboxes, and plastic chairs with miscellaneous grab bags.

Celebrate A Plenty
HODR had a busy social calendar over the past few weeks with invitations to official ceremonies, to celebrate the Bangla New Year, and to share meals in friends’ homes. The grand opening of the Save the Children/HODR playgrounds was held at the Choto Rajapur build site and attended by hundreds of children and adults from the community. We were welcomed by the community as they lined the dusty street awaiting our arrival. Then we had the obligatory speeches, some dancing and an “all hands” performance of “You are my Sunshine.” NGO reps, local and school officials were invited to participate in our hand-painting ceremony. They ran around like children, leaving their blue hand prints on the brightly colored playground equipment. After a ribbon cutting ceremony, we proudly opened the 5 playgrounds of Sarankhola. Other events included turning over ceremonies at: the Amragacchia English Medium School, the Morelganj Lyceum Acacdemy, and a beautiful (albeit quickly organized) ceremony at the Kodamtola Informal school.

We had 50 volunteers join us from 10 different countries with an average stay of a whopping 31 days! Now, the volunteers have scattered to Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar, Calcutta, Bangkok, Mayanmar, Canada, Ireland, Philippines, places near and far. They left via launch, bus, rocket, and two of them even pedaled off on a van (a local method of transport consisting of a large tricycle with a wooden flatbed)! We leave our Bangla friends with a heavy heart but content in the knowledge that we helped so many in such a short time. We leave confident that we will be together again, somewhere we are needed, to help those suffering after a natural disaster.

Thank you, for who you are and what you do.

Until we meet again…..

Marc Young
Operations Director
Hands On Disaster Response

With 25 volunteers in the house, we continue to grow and expand the projects we’re working on! Here’s a look at our second month in Bangladesh:

Kodamtola Informal School
Building on our partnership with IAT-West (Interagency Assessment Team, comprised of the U.S. State Department, Department of Defense (DOD), USAID, and various branches of the armed forces), we’ve rebuilt a rural primary school in the neighboring village of Kodamtola.

Work started with demolition, ground raising, and erecting a temporary structure for the students. As the kids looked on from under their bright blue tarp (ok, they actually spilled onto the build site pretty much all the time), we framed a new 30′ x 12′ multi-room structure for the school. We completed the roof with tin, and the school will finish off the walls with chas, a local, natural woven material.

Jump, Swing, Slide
Our playground-building partnership with Save the Children is off to a strong start! After pre-fabricating all of our playground pieces at our base in Rayenda, we loaded up two fishing trawlers and cruised down to Tafalbari, site of Playground #1. Unloading finished in record time, thanks to our fire-chain of nimble-footed children! Alongside the community, we dug holes, assembled the equipment, poured cement, and finished it off with two coats of bright, primary-colored paint. Today, we’ll invite the children to join us in finishing off the playground with a fresh set of pint-sized handprints!

There are four playgrounds left, and we’re in the process of pre-fabricating the lumber, pipes, rope, and hardware for each remaining set. This week, we’ll load up another couple of trawlers and head to the Ali Khan School, founded by a freedom fighter in the Bangladeshi Liberation War.

Amragacchia English Medium School
During the assessment phase, we passed by this school numerous times. Near the collapsed building, amidst downed trees and a thrashed schoolyard, children still sat at their desks in straight rows with bright blue uniforms freshly pressed. This image of perseverance stuck with us, and thanks to a generous donation from one of our first volunteers, we were able to return this month and rebuild, from the ground up.

First we constructed the framework for a new 42′ by 13.5′ building and used trusses to form a hip roof. We’re cladding the roof and 3 walls in tin, and the front will be a combination of tin and carved wood (in the local style). The interior walls, to separate rooms for different class levels, are of local material called bera. All the while, the students have been attending classes in temporary thatch structures adjacent to our build site. How’s that for studying hard?

Morrelganj Hindu Temple
Although Bangladesh is a Muslim country, there’s a strong Hindu population in the area. IAT-West identified a 100 year old Hindu temple which lost its roof in Cyclone Sidr, and HODR collaborated on the repairs.

After winding through some market streets, cutting through a dry goods shop, and then passing through a family’s personal residence, you emerge upon the small temple. Despite the challenges of working on an old structure, we framed, shimmed, and straightened a shiny new roof for the temple. It was a unique opportunity to work at an active place of worship, while the community passed to worship beneath us!

2 Halves = 1 Whole
In the past month, we’ve built 5 more HODR Halves! Our teams of volunteers continue to refine and improve each step of the process, from the design, framing, and materials, to the finishing touches of doors and windows. Each recipient family faces a unique set of challenges in their Sidr recovery, but they’ve all been equally grateful for their new homes.

Previous HODR Half recipients have also been seen building their own additions onto the framework we left them, effectively creating “HODR Wholes”!

Smile!
The village photo project continues! In addition to the village shots from around our house and our work sites, we’ve also set up “school picture” projects at each of our school build sites. Each student will receive a personal headshot and a class photo – likely the only images they’ll have of themselves at this age. So far we have printed almost 1000 photos for our friends and neighbors in Sharonkhola.

Un Poquito Mas, Bangladesh style
The community has started to express their appreciation for our work and our volunteer effort with invitations for lunch, dinner, dancing – in once case, even a serenade by a one-man harmonium band! Our hosts take immense pleasure in treating us to elaborate 7 course meals; if we politely decline a serving of extra rice, as soon as we turn our head they’ve scooped it on to our plates and are laughing at our surprise. What can you do? It’s Bangladeshi shopota, or culture/hospitality.

We’re almost ready to form a hospitality team to manage our social calendar while still making sure we have time to get work done! It is awe inspiring and humbling to be in the shelter of a landless person, who wants nothing more than to demonstrate their appreciation by sharing food with us.

You still have about 45 days to join us in Bangladesh. Come see what all the fun, hard work, and shopota are about!

Marc Young
Operations Director
Hands On Disaster Response

From the very first days of Project Rayenda, we’ve been playing with children at Save the Children “Safe Spaces.” These safe, unstructured play areas sited at local schools provide psycho-social support to children following a natural disaster. As the government and NGOs push to get kids back in school, we’ve been working with Save the Children on a way to transition the benefits of the Safe Space into a more permanent structure at local schools.

HODR volunteers have been hard at work on a playground design which can be built at existing Safe Space locations. As a result, Save the Children would like to collaborate with HODR on 5 of these playground projects! The remote rural communities here have never had playground equipment before, and are incredibly excited to start working with us on the swings, monkey bars, and jungle gyms we have planned!

In order to fulfill our commitment to Save the Children, we will extend our project end date to Thursday, 17 April, 2008. As our work extends into April, we will continue to work on a mix of shelter, community space, and playground projects.

There’s still time to join us in Bangladesh! We hope to see you in Rayenda soon.

Marc Young
Operations Director
Hands On Disaster Response

Morrelganj Kindergarten
Through a unique new partnership HODR has re-roofed a school damaged by Cyclone Sidr. We have joined forces with the U.S. State Department, Department of Defense (DOD), USAID, and various branches of the armed forces! The assessment was done by the Interagency Assessment Team (IAT), the funding came from DOD, and the work was completed with local carpenters, Air Force personnel, and Hands On volunteers. Even better news: we have more exciting projects in the pipeline with this new affiliation to help the devastated region of Sharonkhola.

Safe Space
Hands On volunteers continue to work with the children at local Safe Space play areas. Our two previous sites in Sonatola are in the process of transitioning their attendees back to school so we’ve rechanneled our energy to a new site in Kontakata, just a short walk away. This site has 40+ children who regularly attend. We’ve taught the kids Ducks Duck Goose, Red Light Green Light, and the Chicken Dance (sorry!), and they’ve taught us the Bangladesh national anthem and helped us laugh from the deepest places in our bellies.

Termites? (Bangla tree work)
After a month of partnering with locals on the 3 HODR crosscut saws, we’ve cleared 5 dozen fallen trees from homes, paths, and yards. Trees here are sold by the cubic foot, so seemingly nonsensical cuts and frenzied excavation of the root ball are often the name of the game. This work is completely manual, and it is achieved through a mix of teamwork, sturdy ropes, and a local chant belted out in unison. We’ve also managed to right a couple trees – valuable sources of fruit and shade for their families.

Lords of the Rings (or Latrines)
We continue to assist local NGO Agrodut Foundation with their latrine distribution program and have installed 30 latrines to date. After the concrete rings and slabs are pedaled home aboard colorfully painted “vans” (a pedal bike with a flat, open platform on the back), HODR volunteers show up with tools and enthusiasm to get the system in place.

All of the latrines have been distributed in the countryside just north of Rayenda; as we cross over the small river, the bustle of the town falls away and yields a landscape of golden rice paddies, sugar palms, and children playing cricket in fields dotted with cows. The small clusters of families who live out here very rarely see foreigners, so each site we show up at is a completely different crowd. We’ve found the reception to be similar to that of our other Bangladeshi neighbors – they often stare, then smile, then join in, then laugh. A successful installation is celebrated with young coconuts freshly plucked from the surrounding trees.

Village Photo Project
The first 300 prints are in! Similar to our photo projects in Indonesia and the Philippines, we collected images of our neighbors and friends and had them printed. Most people in this area had their mementos and photos of themselves and their loved ones washed away. So HODR volunteers took pictures and then returned to hand out the prints, much to the delight of the recipients. The project will continue as long as we are here and we have already expanded to include our first school. Stay tuned for next month’s report!

HODR Half (It’s not half a house, it is the start of a full house!)
Hands On volunteers have completed the construction of 4 homes! Our shelter program has become a ‘must do’ project for our volunteers. The recipients of the shiny new homes are happy to have us helping and grateful to be receiving a new home. This appreciation manifests itself in a shower…of food! Many thanks to all of the volunteers who have participated in this successful, ongoing program. The end cost of the HODR Half is only about $425 US dollars!! If you are not able to join us then maybe you could sponsor a home?

Infrastructure
As our volunteer numbers continue to grow, so too does our house evolve. We’ve taken a two room unit on the ground floor of our building to house our growing assortment of tools, as well as some of the hardware materials for our projects.

We’ve also completed construction on two lofted sleep spaces in our house! Accessible by ladder and slightly secluded from the throng below, this prime real estate expands our capacity and has given the house a fun new look!

Marc Young
Operations Director
Hands On Disaster Response

Project Rayenda has been open for two weeks, and we’re up to 12 volunteers from 3 countries! Here’s a look at the projects we’re working on so far:
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The information you have been waiting for is here! We have updated our volunteer info in an effort to help you make your way to Rayenda, Bangladesh.

You will have 2 options (via boat or bus) to complete the last leg of your travel from Dhaka. There are advantages and disadvantages to each method, but as of this writing we are recommending that you consider arriving in Rayenda by boat (launch or the Rocket steamer). Please read the downloadable guide we have compiled and make your own decision.

The information flow is an ongoing effort. Toshiro Kida (TC) is here and he has provided a great deal of information on Dhaka lodging and bus travel. We would like your input as you make your way here to help the people affected by cyclone Sidr.

See you soon!

Hands On Disaster Response is excited to announce the naming of its Bangladesh effort, “Project Rayenda” and has located a space for its volunteer center!
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Bangladesh is a go! Beginning 5 January, 2008, we will be accepting volunteers for our cyclone relief project. Please take a first look at the assessment through the video above. Preliminary volunteer information is available here, and photos are available here.

On 15 November 2007 Cyclone Sidr slammed into the coastline of Bangladesh and worked its way north, wreaking carnage upon predominantly poor coastal communities. The official death count now stands at over 3500 and the infrastructural damage to houses, public buildings, schools and roads is extensive.

Hands On Disaster Response (HODR) executive director David Campbell arrived in Dhaka, Bangladesh today. He will be met by volunteer project coordinator Stefanie Chang and HODR operations director Marc Young, currently en-route.

The team plans to coordinate in Dhaka with other NGOs and gather regional information prior to traveling into the cyclone affected areas.

HODR will make an assessment of the area to determine whether our volunteer resources could assist the approximately 8,000,000 people affected by this huge storm. The timeframe of the decision-making process will be driven by the ability to gather and evaluate information on the ground.

Please check this site for regular updates as they are sent from the devastation zone.