While we know the Philippine government is doing everything it can to get help to the most Yolanda-striken areas, more and more people are becoming frustrated with the speed, or lack thereof, of the government’s relief operations. Over on Facebook, we’ve been seeing a lot of regular civilians giving their two cents’ worth of suggestions, some speaking their frustrated minds. Of the rubble, we came across a note written by Facebook user Olive Ybanez, where she lists down ideas and suggestions on how our government can do a better job at distributing relief goods. Her note is possibly one of the most practical and most sensible we’ve come across. She addresses the President in Tagalog. Below, we run an English translation just so more people from around the world can see her sharp logic.
Perhaps you can pace the food distribution every four hours. Psychologically speaking, it is good when these survivors see that distribution is only being paced, and that another batch of aid is coming, that more is on its way. This will assure them and will certainly keep them calm.
Establish your presence by putting up more distrubution satellite sites. Even if these are small in scale, these distribution sites will assure them that help is always close by and at hand. This will also prevent them from wanting to loot.
Give candy away. Having something in their mouths will help alleviate the dismal thought of hunger.
Instead of distributing water by the liter, perhaps you can look into distributing water by the 5-gallon quantities? We can imagine there are a lot of water containers there by now. They can help and ration it for themselves.
Organize the survivors around the small distrubution satellite sites so that they get an invaluable sense of community and belonging.
Having this sense of community will certainly empower them. It will also help them realize that they are now responsible members of said community and of the rescue operation itself. Get them to tidy up their mini-village of survivors. Keeping them busy will help alleviate the sense of misery, of being lost, and of hunger.
When these communities have been set-up, you can now get them to organize programs—sing, dance, tell jokes, stories. This will help them forget, if even for a little while, the tradegy there are in.
And if you can still afford it, continue giving away food and water. Seeing there’s enough for all will erase any idea of looting.
Looting can be avoided, people will stop becoming greedy, when they are assured that upon their return, there will still be resources. Let’s give them that comfort and all will be well.
Olive Ybanez is a Sr. Manager for Corporate Training at Aegis; a UP Diliman graduate, a concerned citizen, and a part-time intrimitida—the last part from her.
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