There is life after Typhoon Haiyan. Highly compromised. Totally devastated. But still there.
When I returned to Tacloban in May, I was surprised by how little was rebuilt and how utterly devastated the region was.
First, there were very little accommodations for the volunteers. In Tacloban, the water faucets spewed sewage. The only potable water was found in bottled water. Most people either couldn’t afford, or have access to, such a luxury as bottled water.
The airport was iffy. Cars and buses took six to seven times longer to reach anywhere. Ferries were OK, only when not overburdened.
Life is very fragile, especially for the poorest. When a disaster occurs, these are the people who are the most affected. They are not only far removed from any help; they are completely off the help radar.
Miraculously, none of our sponsored children perished. More people die after a natural disaster than during it. This is because of illness due to drinking or washing in contaminated water; lack of food and shelter; lack of medical resources.
The disaster is the catalyst which destroys civilizations.
In the tiny ecosystem of Tacloban, and in its surrounding area, lives have changed. Rebuilding will take years. Many lives will continue to be lost because of lack of aid reaching the neediest along with limited-to-no resources to draw from.
Feedingafuture.org was started five years ago to teach children there is a life outside of the dumpsite. Our goal was to educate children so they could pull their families from extreme poverty. We use the ‘teach the fisherman to fish’ approach rather than just providing money and food to alleviate today’s hunger.
What sticks in my mind from my travels is how little means so much.
Spending $350 provides shelter to a family. This buys the lumber, and we previously found retired skilled locals to help us with the construction. When you start something important, like providing food and shelter to the neediest, volunteers are found.
The work gets done.
Lives are changed.
You end up creating something from nothing. In the process you realize what is truly important in life; eating out, shopping, conspicuous consumption become unimportant. Using our time, money and energy to help another person is what brings value to living. It changes our role from existing to fulfillment.
I plan to continue to work with my charity and use it as a model to help other students create their own charities. In the past five years, I’ve made mistakes, learned a lot and had incredible satisfaction from seeing dying, sick children become healthy, get an education, and be on the path to succeed in life.
In 2010, Western Medical Sciences/Biology alumnus Joshua Zyss set up a charity in Tacloban City, Philippines, to sponsor 20 children, who spent their days digging through local dumpsites for survival, to attend school full time. This project, Feeding a Future, now sponsors 30 children, with the goal of doing so until each graduates high school. Zyss, a Western Humanitarian Award winner in 2014, is currently in medical school at Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences. Contact him at JZyss@kcumb.edu.