Daw Tin Pu and Pho Chit enjoy their new home. (Photo: Mo Mya Mya Kyaw/Myanmar Red Cross Society)

Daw Tin Pu smiles brightly as she talks about her new home. It is a shelter built for her and her four-year-old grandson Pho Chit, by the Myanmar Red Cross Society.

“Being safe and secure in our new home is such a nice feeling,” says the 70-year-old widow.

Their old home was destroyed in Cyclone Nargis which struck Myanmar on 1 and 2 May 2008, badly hitting the Ayeyarwady Delta. The village of Pay Gone where Daw Tin Pu and Pho Chit live, is situated in Kungyangon township, one of several affected townships in the delta.

Before the cyclone, Daw Tin Pu’s small house was in a state of disrepair. When Nargis struck, “it fell down completely”.

She and Pho Chit sought refuge in the village monastery where they had their meals and slept. For the next several months, they continued to sleep at the monastery at nights. For meals, they depended on one of Daw Tin Pu’s daughters who stays in the same village. Daw Tin Pu who suffers from hypertension and heart problems, could not

Daw Tin Pu and Pho Chit in their new home. (Photo: Mo Mya Mya Kyaw/Myanmar Red Cross Society)

get any assistance from her seven other children who stay in other parts of Kungyangon township or other areas in the country, as they were in difficult financial situations and had families of their own to look after.

Pho Chit is under his grandmother’s care as his mother (Daw Tin Pu’s daughter) died upon giving birth to him. His father lives in another part of Kungyangon with a daughter and son.

“When I heard that the Red Cross was going to build houses for our village and that I was on the selection list, I was very happy – so happy that I cried”, Daw Tin Pu recalls.

A sample house was built for Daw Tin Pu at the end of February 2009, as the initiation of the Myanmar Red Cross Society’s household shelter project in Kungyangon township. The project which is also conducted in other townships in the delta, is part of the society’s overall Nargis relief and recovery operation aimed at assisting 100,000 affected families across 13 townships. The three-year operation (2008 to 2011) is being conducted with the assistance of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the coordinating body for about 186 national Red Cross societies throughout the world.

Daw Tin Pu’s house was constructed in about one week. It is made up of wood, poles, bamboo, bamboo matting, nylon ropes and thatch. Construction was carried out by a shelter technician and field assistant attached to the society’s hub office in Kungyangon, as well as five local carpenters. This shelter team and several others received instructions in building techniques at the start of the shelter programme.

A total of 20 houses including Daw Tin Pu’s were built in the village of Pay Gone, which has a population of about 900 villagers. Households which had not yet effected proper shelters since the disaster struck, were selected for this project. Selections were undertaken by Village Tract Recovery Committee members comprising village leaders, in consultation with the society’s hub office. Altogether, a total of 368 shelters have been allocated for targeted beneficiaries across 36 villages in Kungyangon township. Of this number, a total of 326 shelters had been completed at press time.

The current phase of the household shelter project of the Myanmar Red Cross Society, targets a total of about 8,000 families across 11 townships. To date, almost 4,000 shelters have been constructed since the initiation of the project earlier in 2009. A second phase of shelters for an additional 7,000 vulnerable families is scheduled to begin in January 2010.

Other ongoing shelter projects conducted by the society include the construction of Red Cross posts (for a variety of uses by communities and Red Cross volunteers), schools and rural health centres, as well as repairs to community buildings damaged by the cyclone.

Assistance is also provided to affected communities through other programmes under the Nargis Operation. These include livelihoods projects such as fertilizer distributions for paddy farmers and imparting agricultural know-how to them; and cash-for-work for villagers participating in the rehabilitation of community infrastructure damaged by the cyclone; and community-based health and first aid projects such as training villagers to spread health awareness among their communities through first aid and hygiene promotions, as well as disease prevention initiatives. Other support includes water, sanitation and hygiene promotion projects such as the rehabilitation and construction of ponds, wells and water tanks to provide communities with safe drinking water; and guiding communities to construct latrines. There is also disaster risk management training at community level, and psychosocial support projects – these include social gatherings such as sports and cooking competitions, debates and drama performances which are aimed at helping communities to build self-reliance and resilience.