Port Vila, 08 March 2019 — Over 1500 people on four affected communities and two host communities in South East Ambrym were provided assistance from Vanuatu Red Cross Society.
VRCS deployed its field team on January 8, 2019 for rapid assessment to identify urgent needs in the South East of the island. The team comprised of 6 staffs from the Headquarter, 3 from Sanma RC Branch and 2 from Malampa RC Branch with the main task of verifying the data provided from 2016 census.
The assessment assisted 350 affected families with Non Food Items along with the awareness activities on safe emergency shelter, health and hygiene.
VRCS has worked closely with National disaster management office (NDMO) and Malampa provincial disaster committee; similarly, field teams worked closely with Area council and counsellors, chiefs on mobilizing the communities to better respond to the situation. 22 volunteers were hired locally for assistance in assessment, awareness sessions and distributions. In addition, awareness sessions on safe shelter, First Aid, health and hygiene were conducted across 14 communities and one evacuation centre at Bossom primary school – Ulei .
With a total population of 2170 people, there are 518 household across all 14 communities, however only 3 communities were identified to evacuate to two host communities; the evacuated families were being placed with specific host families thus both host and evacuees were in need of emergency shelter
The total population targeted with emergency shelter is 1508 with 350 households
VRCS response strategy focuses on three main areas of support- supplying the affected population with essential Non Food Items emergency shelter, ensuring essential information reaches the affected population and providing psycho social support, health &Hygiene and First Aid.
An amount of eight million vatu (VT8, 000,000) from Disaster Response Emergency Fund was released by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) to support Vanuatu Red Cross Society operation to supply a total of 350 shelter tool kits, 700 tarpaulins, 350 hygiene kits and 700 Jerry cans of 10 L were distributed to each 350 households evacuated and host families.
The VRCS intervention on South East Ambrym ended with a 3 days of Distribution Post Monitoring activity to get feedback from evacuees and host families /beneficiaries.