It was 11 months working closely with the Government and with 70 NGO partners who are working providing and supporting temporary shelter and permanent housing. Interestingly there were also organizations which not working for shelter nor construction but actively participate in the coordination meeting. Moreover they also participated in the project together with some of the shelter NGOs.
In the areas which affected by tsunami, liquefaction and earthquake we encourage people centered housing recovery with owner driven setting . Through many ways we sent essential message in recovery, Build Back Safer (BBS). Lastly we pursued localisation to ensure local NGOs confidently step-in as key partner.
Therefore in this writing, from my own reflection, I want to share 3 things I learned during my mission in Central Sulawesi.
1 . Know Your Mission
Having a complete understanding of the mission is critical in order we can coordinate effort as humanitarian shelter agencies. Agencies should be proactive bolstering people's rights on their own recovery pathways. For instance in the first months our advocacy was – if the affected people need temporary shelter – all stakeholder should strengthen individual temporary shelter assistance. There was a debate on which temporary shelter is more appropriate, collective (barracks) or individual. Later on it is proven that the individual is much better. Even the individual temporary shelter built through process which took time but it was respecting community decision. On the other hand the collective temporary shelter, delivered as a product it seems disconnected with the recipient and their community. Furthermore there were protection issues, sustainability and also the cost is very expensive.
Other aspect that we continuously pursue is BBS. To make it successful the BBS should be everyone concern and embedded in everyone’s program. The coordination team and some of the partners who are in the strategic advisory group formulate the key messages on safer construction. It was quite challenging for engineers and architects to formulate the message since it should be easily understood by non-engineering people. Even more it should be easily understood by low educated people.Finally the BBS messaging called 7 Principles to Build Safer House after 4 months was launched, received endorsement from government. The IEC material of 7 Principles to Build Safer House can be downloaded here for portrait layout and landscape layout.
Working in recovery post-disaster will always find a lot of noise. Political actors might want to push their political agenda because they want to be recognized and get the vote. Business people and building contractors who want to gain massive profits for their services and products. Affected people who become impatient due to long process to the recovery. And many more! But with solid understanding about the mission, we can focus to help the people on their recovery. It will take some time, but it helps the people decide their recovery pathway. At the same time they would have safer rebuild.
2 . Coordination Skill + Creativity = More Influence
We tried to understand why non-shelter NGOs participated in coordination
meeting? Also, why number of participant has kept growing? NGO partners found the
information shared in the coordination meeting were reliable. The coordination
meeting consistently held every two weeks[i].
The meetings were not merely for information sharing but also to find partners.
There were INGOs and donor came to find local NGOs who could possibly become partners.
Not only coordination meeting, the NGO partners also
strengthen their collaboration through projects. There were two projects
carried out by NGO partners. The first was the commemoration of one year event
of the disaster. The event was intended to send message on people centered
housing recovery. In the event, NGO partners presented their program to support
the community with owner-driven approach.
The last collaboration was this December 2019, there were 23 organizations supporting this event. During December, the NGOs conducted house owner training which all trainee were women. Our intention was the women might have BBS knowledge and familiar with the construction monitoring tools. Then with confidence, lead the construction of their houses. The event named ‘Women are the pioneer of reconstruction’ gained support from the Sigi District Government[ii]. The government will continue the house owner training for women using government budget. They invite NGOs participation to support government program as they need technical people and community mobilizers.
None of these two events were planned by each NGO partners
at the first place. Even though they were willingly to contribute according to
their resources. Some of them sent their engineers, architects and community
mobilizers. They also donate construction material for practical training and
also gave the funding. Why then, they were willing to collaborate which
actually gave more burden to their resources and budget?
From my reflection every agencies who participated in the coordination
meeting later on have the same concern. We want to respect owner-driven
recovery and at the same time ensure BBS can be achieved. These messages were
kept on sounding in many ways during the coordination. It need skills and
creativity to gather everyone to fulfill the mission.
3 . To serve and to inspire are beyond leadership
How significant is leadership to run coordination? From my
own reflection there are other elements which are more crucial than leadership.
My role as coordinator is more to serve and if I am lucky I can inspire the
partners. It is important for the partners understand the mission and later on
they could create the momentum fulfilling the mission.
For instance once I shared that women can lead the construction
of their own houses. They should have the ability to decide what kind of house they want to rebuild. They
can choose the design, select the building material, and control the pace but
the most important is ensure BBS. I told to some of the partners that we need
home owner training for women and there should be big event to launch the idea. Then Danni Rossa from Wahana Visi Indonesia stepped in.
Danni with her team consist of technical people from several
NGOs designed the curriculum. They designed homeowner training in 5 villages as
pilot project. It was a big effort. She had to coordinate 23 organizations to
select locations, trainers and logistics including construction material
provision. Through community mobilization the team had to gather women as
trainees. Around 150 women had received 2 days training on BBS and construction
monitoring. Later on at the ‘Women are the pioneer of reconstruction’ event we
knew the home owner training was successful. As I wrote above the District
Government will continue to run home owner training program for women.
This writing will be too long, if I have to write other
person like Danni who understood the mission then willingly took part. They
were not just participated but led other people to fulfil the mission. I am grateful
that we have Danni and other partners who can multiply our effort. As we know we
always have short timeframe compare to the full recovery, but we need to set
the solid foundation. Therefore I am gladly served these leaders.
Arwin Soelaksono
[i] Before
the meeting we always share the updated partners’ progress from Information
Management (IM). We presented gaps and opportunities from each sub-district.
From the IM we also share potential of overlap which every agencies need to be cautious
and check their plan. We also had conducted mediation for partners whose working
area were overlapped.
[ii] https://kabarluwuk.com/2019/12/23/ibu-pelopor-konstruksi-berdayakan-perempuan-bermitigasi/
