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Swift intervention after the flood: 4,000 families supplied with relief goods

Countries
Sri Lanka
Sources
Humedica
Publication date
Origin
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Mudslides, endless raining and innumerable destroyed houses: this May Sri Lanka had once more to face heavy floods, which caused acute emergency for hundreds of thousands of people. While some of the victims only lost parts of their possessions, others lost all of it due to the surging water. Thousands of families were left with nothing from one day to the next.

Very well positioned in Sri Lanka by its local subsidiary humedica Lanka , the humedica supporters could start their targeted assistance for the affected people only few days after the first floods. Together with the respective village authorities, the Grama Niladhari, humedica identified about 4,000 families, which were especially indigent and urgently needed support, in the worst-affected and most populous areas surrounding the capital Colombo. Thereby the focus was on families with small children and single mothers.

To secure their basic supply and to support them in the first weeks after the flood disaster, the humedica helpers distributed packages containing household and hygiene items as well as disinfectants. Besides sleeping mats, clothes and tableware these aid packages also comprised soap, toothpaste, cleaning agents and towels. Basically all the things needed for the fresh start of a destroyed household.

Families with babies and children also received school and baby care packages, whose content ensured that the little ones could be cared for accordingly and the elder children could continue to attend school. On the whole 227,000 relief goods were distributed this way.

"Many families are left with nothing after the floods, because the water masses ruined all of their possessions and there is nobody to help them. To avoid the outbreak of diseases caused by the lack of hygiene, we now distribute the most basic everyday objects.“, explains the responsible humedica employee Magdalena Preis. "Our aim is to enable the supported families to stand on their own two feet again as soon as possible and to give them the chance to provide for themselves."

Another central issue of the humedica relief measures was the comprehensive distribution of roof panels to protect particularly the very simply built houses of the poorer population from severe weather in the future. After all Sri Lanka suffers time and again from heavy rains and floodings.

All these relief measures could be implemented so quickly and properly also thanks to the help of many volunteers on site. Together with the humedica employees many young people pitched in, prepared the aid packages and took part in the distribution.

To secure that the distributed relief goods served their purpose and assisted the recipients in their emergency situation as best as possible, humedica will evaluate the distributions subsequently. "We plan to visit families to check if the recipients were satisfied with the distributed relief goods and if these achieved their original objective," describes Magdalena Preis the relief activities and concludes by saying, "We were very happy about the many volunteer helpers, who supported us with all their resources. This shows again that our support in Sri Lanka is in the right place.“