By: EILEEN NAZARENO-BALLESTEROS

TACLOBAN CITY- In spite of its being victim as well of the world’s strongest typhoon ever recorded in history that which hit Eastern Visayas on November 8 last year, the archdiocese of Palo, under the stewardship of Archbishop John Du still took on its Christian duty of helping people in this time of extreme necessity.
Ninety-five percent of church edifices and rectories within the archdiocese were initially calculated to have suffered the brunt of the supertyphoon Yolanda’s catastrophic strength.
This is besides the destruction went through by the very residence of the archbishop nestled atop a hill in Barangay Arado in Palo, Leyte and the two seminaries also located in same municipality, as well as the Metropolitan Cathedral of Palo where the Papal Nuncio Guiseppe Pinto and Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle celebrated mass on December 24 and November 28 respectively.
Notwithstanding this hardship, the archdiocese never failed to extend assistance to the people who sought refuge in the local church regardless of their religious belief.
The two seminaries, namely St. John the Evangelist School of Theology and Sacred Heart Seminary, and the Chancery of the Archdiocese, though partly damaged by the typhoon, served as evacuation centers for hundreds of families whose homes were destroyed by the typhoon. As of now, no evacuee was left in these religious institutions as work resumed and classes are to restart this week.
As of this time, the Archdiocesan Disaster Response Committee is advancing to the next phase of its outreach to the victims of the supertyphoon Yolanda. The archbishop will help pre-identified victims have their new homes in due time.
Largely, the help reached victims from hard hit areas, that is, Tacloban City, Palo, Tolosa, Tanauan, Mayorga, Sta. Fe and Alangalang towns. Almost of these areas have confirmed deaths due to Yolanda.
Fr. Oscar Florencio, erstwhile head of the Archdiocesan Disaster Relief and Rehabilitation Command Center before he decided to focus on his official concerns as rector of SJEST in Palo, said that the archdiocese will be constructing permanent houses for these victims.
He added that the church planned to donate a lot somewhere in Palo town for the resettlement of these carefully screened beneficiaries. The Catholic Bishop Conference of the Philippines and the Archdiocese of Manila will fund the undertaking.
Identifying the beneficiaries does not come easy for the archdiocese as many factors are being considered besides those specified by donors. The livelihood of the victims and the extent of damage suffered by their homes are also major concerns, according to Florencio.

By: LIZBETH ANN A. ABELLA

BASEY,Samar- Heeding to an appeal by the United Nations  for continuous help to the typhoon -ravage Philippines, the Norwegian government has pledge to donate an additional $ 8 million dollars.
The new fresh aid had made Norway the third-biggest donors among the countries that extended financial assistance to the country. With the $ 8million, Norway’s total donation to the country has now reached to $43 million.
The new financial assistance to the country was announced by Borge Brende, Norway’s foreign minister who visited this town on January 10.
The Norwegian government believes that the first phase of dealing with the catastrophe is over and now  is the time to move  for early recovery phase where  houses, school and livelihood should be rebuilt said  Brende.
“We know that fishermen lost their boats, farmers lost their harvest  and coconut farmers are in a very bad situation  knowing that it will take a decade to grow those trees again” said Brende.
Brende revealed that their government has been very active in the emergency phase wherein they supported the Philippine government for the people to have clean water, they put up hospitals in coordination with international Red Cross, they coordinated with UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization to help farmers. The Norwegian government has also supported projects for the protection of women and children who are the most vulnerable, and in the early recovery they supported water and sanitation knowing that sanitation facilities were also damage by the typhoon.
Brende emphasized that their government wants to send a clear signal to the world that when their presence was felt in the emergency phase during catastrophe, they are also committed in rebuilding and they are hoping to build back better.
The Norwegian foreign affairs minister expressed his dismay that the second appeal of the UN for other countries to help Philippines only reach 40%, for their part the government has pledge an additional contribution of 8 million dollars making their total contribution to $43 million making their country the third biggest donor next to US and UK.
The Norwegian foreign affairs minister informed that the additional $ 8 million will be allocated to the best projects in building back better. Though he did not go into full details as to how the amount will be allocated for sure it is in support  for the early recovery and the recovery phase he said.

TACLOBAN CITY – Farmers in Leyte’s third district received vegetable seeds and fertilizers for them to restart after they were hit by supertyphoon Yolanda from the Department of Agriculture and Senator Cynthia Villar, who chairs the committee of agriculture at the Senate.
Farmers from the towns of Tabango, Calubian, Villaba and Leyte town received the assistance from Villar and agriculture official on January 13. Fishermen from the same towns also received fishing equipment from the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR).
Villar, joined by Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Emerson Palad and Assistant Sec.Ed de Luna, BFAR National Director Asis Perez and BFAR-8 Director Juan Albaladejo, Philippine Coconut Authority Assistant Director Joel Pilapil, distributed 10 motorized bancas, 500 bags of different vegetables and fruit seeds for backyard gardening which includes kang kong, cucumber, tomato, water melon and mass melon per town in the district.
They also distributed 10 bags of corn seeds of 18 kg /bag and 125 coconut seedlings, initial with entitlement and certificate of maximum 500 per farmer based on 100 coconut seedlings per 1 hectare from PCA.
Sen. Villar also distributed 500 food packs; 115 sacks of fertilizer and 400 corrugated sheets and two boxes of umbrella nails good for 100 families in each towns of the district. Each family will receive 4 pieces of GI sheets and half a kilo of nails.
The senator emphasized that what they have distributed was a continuous program of the DA wherein the department will continue to distribute vegetables seeds for inter -cropping while for coconut seeds an additional of more than 20,000 seedlings will be distributed for the next six months.
She also said that an additional number of motorized fishing boats are expected to be given to all fishermen within the next six months. (LIZBETH ANN A. ABELLA)

TACLOBAN CITY – Health officials in the region expressed their fear of a possible outbreak of both measles and dengue fever cases in Yolanda-hit areas after cases of these ailments stalked typhoon victims.
Doctor Jose Llacuna, Jr., health director, said that as of their latest monitoring, 56 cases of dengue fever and similar number of cases of measles were monitored by their office in Yolanda-hit areas.
He said that Tacloban posted the highest number of  dengue fever cases at 26  followed by Babatngon with 21 cases, Palo ( three) Macarthur (2) while Tanauan, Carigara, Dulag and Alangalang, all towns in Leyte with one case each.
Llacuna said that the cases of dengue fever affecting residents of these areas have raised fears among them as this could result for a possible outbreak due to present condition as rains continued to be experienced in these places.
On top of this, the still uncollected heap of garbage in these areas would only compound the health risk for these people, the health regional director said.
The health official had called for cooperation of all as government alone cannot solve this problem.
He also called for people to avoid self medication as some diseases like chikungunya, pneumonia as he urged them instead to seek help from health authorities to immediately and properly provide health and medical assistance to them.
Llacuna added that residents in the affected area should observe the 4S program of the DOH to combat dengue. The 4S stands for the search and destroy, seek early consultation, self –protective and say no to fogging.
He, however, said that in Yolanda- affected areas, fogging was allowed because these were done by technical people.
“Fogging uses chemicals that are harmful to our health,” Llacuna said.
Fogging should also be done in a proper time added Llacuna.
For measles cases, the DOH had also recorded 56 cases which were noted in Tacloban, Carigara, Capoocan and Palo, all in Leyte; Oras and Can-avid, both from Eastern Samar. (ROEL T. AMAZONA)

Pascal Canning, 51, an Irishman, came to the Philippines on March 15, 2006, a few weeks after a landslide covered the entire village of Guinsaugon in St. Bernard, Southern Leyte. He found his wife Eden Lida from Maasin City and they married in 2008.
Like many foreigners who marry locals, Canning got used to the humdrum of rural life, until he opened a new beach hotel named Caimito.
Canning and his wife busied themselves with the day-to-day operation of the hotel, welcoming guests, foreigners and locals alike, to their resort.
Then supertyphoon Yolanda pounded Leyte and Samar on Nov. 8, 2013,  killing more than 6,000 people and flattening more than 1 million houses.
Canning and his wife no longer felt comfortable spending their nights enjoying the evening sky from their newly-built villas, knowing that some 100 kilometers away, entire villages had been swept away, leaving thousands of people homeless.
Canning decided to seek help from his friends in Ireland, starting what the Star Apple Leyte Fund on Nov. 17, 2013 on Facebook.
““I am from Ireland, living in Maasin, Southern Leyte. I set up this fund to help the people from the northern Leyte rebuild their lives. Star Apple Leyte Fund was created this week by me. It is for my friends in Ireland. US people are welcome to donate. If you have a problem with it not being a registered charity, just send your money to the Red Cross, etc. Every penny we take in will be accounted for and every penny will be spent on the displaced people. We have no administrative expenses,” Canning wrote.
By Dec. 19, 2013, Canning and his crew – including his brother Gary and cousin Declan—were already moving on to their second emergency housing project in Tolosa, Leyte, after completing 31 houses in Barangay Tugas in Tabango, Leyte, some four hours drive from his hotel in Maasin City.
Canning said he chose Tabango first because he had a friend there who was married to a Filipina from the area.
“It was total wipeout of the indigent houses. We built 31 12’x10’ houses with about 42 families. The lots are owned by a farmer who donated the trees,” he said.
Choosing Tolosa also gave him no problem in terms of land ownership.
“We needed a place to build without problems. They are not squatters. The indigents have permission to build on the land,” Pascal said.
Every built house gets a house number, and costs about 200 to 300 euros to build. Donors see what their donations are buying on Canning’s Facebook page.
“I am building 30 native homes. This process starts off with the chainsaw operators cutting the fallen coconut trees into 4×4, 4×2, 3×2 and 2×2 timber. My carpenters then build a wooden framed building, 12’ x 10’ and cover in corrugated galvanized steel. The house owner then covers the floor joists with split bamboo.
The outer walls are also covered in bamboo or whatever local materials are available from the land. They do not own the land, mind you,” Canning said.
“On completion, the new home owner then gets P500 (about €8) from our funds to finish off the inside. The cost is about €200 for each house. It would be cheaper if we were not so far from our own homes in Southern Leyte. The last part of the journey can only be undertaken by 4×4 vehicles,” Pascal wrote on his Facebook page.
“Because of my experience in building and the fact that I worked with Filipino carpenters and chainsaw operators before, I could not do nothing. I also speak some of the local language and most importantly understand the people and their culture,” he said.
“After the 30 houses? As long as I have funds I aim to build these basic houses until I die. In my opinion every family deserves a basic 12’ x 10’ place to call home,” he said.
But Canning and his team have already gone beyond 30 houses.
In Tolosa, where coastal areas went underwater due to the storm surge, Canning and his crew have allocated house numbers up to 42 already.
“There are many more homeless who will be in the next batch as long as funds keep coming in,” he said.
Aside from Canning’s friends and family back in the UK helping him, he also tied up with “Taga Maasin Ka Kung (TMKK)…,” an online group mainly composed of overseas Filipino workers from Maasin City which has been doing charity work for three years.
“The funding is by donations from my friends, and friends of friends,” Canning said.
As Star Apple Fund for Leyte and TMKK for Leyte are not yet registered charities, Canning began working on a foundation.
“The SEC (Security Exchange Commission) says I need to have P1 million (about €16,900) in a bank account to start a foundation. I don’t have one million, and even if I did, they expect to leave it there for about 10 days, whilst they check that it is there. So what about the people who need shelter? Housing them is my priority,” Canning said.
“The motto of Star Apple Leyte Fund will now change from ‘I Cannot Do Nothing’ to ‘We Cannot do Nothing’. The ‘We’ is our donors and volunteers,” he said.

By Ronald O. Reyes