Website for aid to Iloilo up.
A website has been set up to help generate and provide direction to contributions and support for rehabilitation efforts of areas ravaged by typhoon “Frank” in this city.
Bannering the call “Bangon Iloilo. Masarangan ta ni (Rise Iloilo. We can overcome this), the website (www.bangoniloilo.com), seeks to provide contributors and prospective funding organizations with access to information related to the affected areas and the need for rehabilitation.
The website was developed by the Canadian Urban Institute with fund assistance from the Canadian International Development Agency. CUI developed a similar website, www.projectsunrise.org, at the height of the Petron oil spill in Guimaras in August 2006.
Bangon Iloilo is a comprehensive investment and promotion campaign designed to help the flood victims recover in terms of housing, access to basic services such as water, health and education, and livelihood and income, according to the CUI. It also aims to maximize rehabilitation efforts to help victims improve their livelihood.
The campaign will be managed by the Metro Iloilo-Guimaras Economic Development Council and the CUI.
CUI regional manager Francis Gentoral said the website is important to provide donor agencies and funding organizations access to official damage reports, news stories, project opportunities, and a list of implementing partners.
“While immediate relief is of the utmost importance in the region, rehabilitation and redevelopment must be planned for the long term,” Gentoral said in a statement.
The website has links to photos of the tragedy and to new accounts after “Frank” ravaged Western Visayas, with Iloilo and Aklan the hardest hit areas.
Gentoral said the website would also provide a forum for local governments and community organizations to reach out to funding partners by providing information on their specific needs for rehabilitation.
Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas, in an open letter posted at the site, appealed for support for the typhoon victims.
“We are in dire need of medicines to cure water-borne diseases and influenza, vaccines for leptospirosis and tetanus, potable water, clothes, blankets, mats, household utensils, soap and food,” the mayor said.
“Our profound gratitude for whatever assistance you may extend and we ask for your continued prayers as we go through this very trying time in our lives,” he said.
At least 145 of the city’s 180 barangays were affected by flooding and more than half of the 418,000 residents. Twenty four died and at least 169 were injured in what is considered the worst flooding in this city and Western Visayas.
At the height of the typhoon, thousands of residents left their homes or climbed on rooftops or trees to escape rampaging flood waters.
The flooding destroyed property and infrastructure running into hundreds of millions of pesos. Aside from Iloilo City, the typhoon also ravaged the neighboring towns of Pavia, Sta.Barbara, Leganes and San Miguel.
The Bangon Iloilo program seeks to institute economic and environmental rehabilitation of at least 241 affected barangays in Iloilo City and the towns of Leganes, Oton, Pavia, San Miguel and Santa Barbara through livelihood activities that support the restoration of the environment.
“The calamity brought back to zero everything that Iloilo and its people built in the last decade. But while it has fallen, it is predestined to rise again and rebuild what has been lost. While relief assistance poured down immediately after floodwaters have subsided, rehabilitation becomes a great challenge,” CUI said in the website.
Nestor P. Burgos Jr., Visayan Daily Star
