An opportunity to look back at the impact of shelter assistance.
Typhoon Haiyan in 2013
On 8th November 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, locally known as Yolanda, made landfall in the Philippines. It was the most ferocious storm in recorded history and caused a swathe of destruction through the Visayas region, with wind speeds exceeding 300 km/h. In addition, a tsunami-like storm-surge devastated communities along the eastern seaboards of Leyte and Samar islands, claiming at least 6,300 lives and displacing 4 million people. Hundreds of thousands of families lost their homes and livelihoods. While accustomed to typhoons and floods, the Filipino people struggled to cope with the magnitude of the disaster triggered by this super-typhoon. Tacloban City was one of the worst affected urban areas but countless smaller rural communities were also devastated. To mark the ten-year anniversary of Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, it is timely to look back, celebrate people’s efforts to recover, remember the people killed and the enduring trauma of such a momentous event. It is also an opportunity to reflect on the ways that academic research and humanitarian practice can inform each other, an ambition that sits at the heart of the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP) at Oxford Brookes University.
CENDEP has a long-standing partnership with CARE International UK’s (CIUK) Global Shelter Team. This partnership with humanitarian practitioners and researchers is one of many that underpins the teaching and learning in the Development and Emergency Practice / Global Development and Humanitarian Practice Master’s programme at CENDEP. Associate lecturer Bill Flinn is a Senior Shelter Advisor at CIUK when he is not co-leading the Shelter After Disaster module with CENDEP’s Charles Parrack. Selecting the Shelter After Disaster module allows direct-entry Master’s students and those studying for their Part 2 Architecture qualification to gain a deep understanding of one of the UN-mandated humanitarian sectors; Shelter and Settlements. Many of Charles and Bill’s former students have gone on to work in the humanitarian Shelter Sector, as coordinators, practitioners and researchers, including Sue Webb (DEP Master’s student 2018-19) who currently works as a researcher at CENDEP and a Shelter Researcher at CIUK. Sue, Bill and Charles have worked together for several years on a series of research projects that have endeavoured to learn from and to enhance humanitarian shelter assistance. Bill was closely involved with CARE Philippines’ response to Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda and later research to understand the impacts and outcomes of such programming.
Response to Typhoon Haiyan by CARE Philippines
CARE Philippines responded to the disaster in 2014-2015 through an innovative shelter programme, the Post-Haiyan Self-Recovery Housing Programme. In the wake of a disaster, communities and households are often the first responders, and frequently begin the process of rebuilding without support from external agencies—a process known as self-recovery. In the wake of a major disaster, needs almost certainly outstrip available resources, so CARE’s humanitarian programme in the Philippines placed self-recovery at the heart of its approach. It was designed to support people in their efforts to recover their homes and livelihoods, whilst encouraging them to rebuild in a way that reduced the vulnerabilities their homes had before the disaster. The photo below was taken two weeks after the typhoon—people were already starting to salvage materials and beginning to rebuild.
The programme targeted remote inland communities across the islands of Leyte and Panay. These rural communities had been severely affected, with a high percentage of totally destroyed houses. 16,000 families were supported with cash, materials and tools coupled with relevant technical assistance. CARE distributed Shelter Repair Kits consisting of CGI metal roofing sheets, tools, materials such as nails, wire and strapping, and a cash grant of PHP 3,000 (about £43). Several weeks later, some recipients qualified for a ‘top-up’ cash grant of PHP 5,000 (about £70). Many community members received technical training in carpentry and all beneficiaries were reached with awareness raising in safer building techniques.
One of the key features of the programme was the use of ‘roving teams’ of carpenters and social mobilisers who accompanied the families in their rebuilding efforts with encouragement and technical advice. In the spirit of ‘bayanihan’, a Filipino word meaning a spirit of community cooperation and cohesion, the burden of construction was often shared between community members, ensuring that vulnerable families were given priority and extra help.
This innovative shelter response by CARE Philippines and its local implementing partners won the World Habitat Award in 2017. The award press release at the time stated that
CARE Philippines have helped thousands of people to rebuild their lives and their homes quickly. This is the first time self-recovery has been used on such a large scale. It has helped more people more quickly than traditional disaster recovery programmes. The potential of this approach to be used elsewhere is absolutely huge.
David Ireland, Director of World Habitat, funders and co-ordinators of the World Habitat Awards
Ongoing research on supporting self-recovery
CIUK’s Global Shelter Team and CENDEP have continued to attract academic research funding in order to develop and share knowledge about this ‘supporting self-recovery’ approach to shelter assistance. For example, a Global Challenges Research Fund Translations Award grant (2019-2021) enabled the co-production of the first guidance document for organisations interested in adopting this approach and aiming to produce an enabling environment for self-recovery in their programming. Pathways Home - Guidance for supporting shelter self-recovery was published through the Global Shelter Cluster’s Recovery Community of Practice in 2022. It was written through a collaborative effort informed by three learning workshops with input from a broad range of practitioners. More recently, Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) funding from Brookes enabled the publication, translation and dissemination of Pathways Home into a much shorter ‘field version’: Pathways Home-The Fast Track-Summary Guide, also available in Arabic, French and Spanish. CENDEP and CIUK co-lead the Global Shelter Cluster’s Recovery Community of Practice which creates a platform for wider influence and knowledge management within the sector.
Ten years later—their stories
With support from USAID, the CARE Global Shelter Team conducted some valuable learning by reviewing the recovery in Tacloban City ten years on from the Typhoon. This presented a rare opportunity to revisit the scene of a major humanitarian response and ask the question: ‘what happened next?’. The research focus was early recovery programming that included repairs and the construction of transitional shelters in urban locations with a focus on community-led methodologies.
The review team of three faced some interesting challenges. Many years on people’s recall of the events was sometimes sketchy and contradictory. There was still evident trauma surrounding the disaster. Causal links between shelter and settlements and their contribution to recovery was hard to trace. Even finding many of the survivors was a challenge as some had moved multiple times and now live in government-funded permanent relocation sites many miles to the north of Tacloban City.
The government declared a 40 metres coastal ‘No Build Zone’ soon after the disaster. Ten years on, and the inhabitants of this coastal strip, mostly informal settlers who were washed out by the storm, have moved and moved and moved again, to be finally relocated seven miles to the north far from their livelihoods and communities. .
The team took a participatory, inclusive and collaborative approach to the research. Focus group discussions, co-production of recovery timelines, household interviews and transect walks all contributed to learning. The team from CARE International UK was able to map the diverse pathways towards recovery that individuals and communities had taken. Ultimately, the goal of the research was to capture people’s experiences of, and perspectives on, humanitarian assistance, something that, due to lack of resources and capacity is not often possible, but that is essential to understanding the long term impact of INGO programmes on people’s lives.
Initial findings and next steps
In the wake of the review, the team has started to reflect upon some of the crucial topics they are keen to take forward, with a view to these eventually contributing to reports and guidance for wider humanitarian learning around post-disaster shelter programming. Some of these topics include the importance of housing, land and property (HLP) issues and the long-term capacity INGOs can create within a community by supporting households to understand their rights to adequate housing. The conundrum of the pros and cons of relocation was another key area that emerged during the fieldwork, in particular the question of whether INGOs can or should play a role when populations are faced with ‘inevitable’ relocation. Finally, the gulf between humanitarian assistance and long-term housing solutions was a topic communities spoke about at length and an area INGOs continue to grapple with in the context of their programming.
At this stage, some preliminary findings around practice and programming have been identified. The importance of putting communities at the centre of their own recovery, and the long-term impact this had on social cohesion, well-being and confidence within the community emerged very clearly from the household interviews and group discussions. There are further opportunities for multi-sectoral programming at the settlement level; participants felt that livelihood support would have had a positive impact on their overall recovery.
Although the review is still in its early stages, the team has hopes that the findings from this case study can contribute to the development of wider discussion and thought on what ‘recovery’ looks like, how it can be supported by INGOs such as CARE and what aspects of programming help or hinder people from their own perspective.
