QUINAPONDAN, EAST SAMAR

The first OperationSAFE child trauma camp in East Samar will be held in Quinapondan from February 2nd to the 7th for 200 1st and 2nd grade students. East Samar is the area in centre right of the country marked in red in the map. This map shows the % of the population that lived below the poverty line BEFORE the disaster. The region is not as heavily populated as some of the other areas hit by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) but it bore the brunt of the surge and the winds and has received much less help.
I. Background on Crisis situation

Typhoon Haiyan (known locally as Yolanda) swept through the central Philippines on 8 November killing over 6,000 and displacing 4 million people. The storm flattened homes and damaged schools, health centres and other infrastructure. Some experts estimate the storm was among the strongest ever to make landfall. About 100,000 people remain in evacuation centres six weeks after the storm. According to Philippine government and the UN the storm has affected 14.1 million people, leaving 4.1 million people displaced and over 1 million houses damaged. 6,069 have been reported dead and another 1,779 are missing as of December 16th.

II. OperationSAFE Child Trauma Camps

OperationSAFE is a child trauma intervention held to raise the resiliency of children who have been through mass trauma situations. It has been used successfully in China, Haiti, Tibet, Japan and the Philippines. The 5-day camp is run by trained volunteers in a Vacation Bible School format in cooperation with local churches. Each camp can serve 150 children between the ages of 5-12 and helps the majority of children to recover from post-traumatic stress and screens more severe cases for further care. OperationSAFE camps have been requested in 58 elementary and 78 pre-schools in East Samar.

III. Short-Term Mission Involvement

We are looking for churches to “adopt” one OperationSAFE camp. The responsibility of the church would be to raise money to sponsor children to attend the camp ($33 per child covers curriculum, supplies, staffing, travel and housing), send a short term team for a period of 10 days to assist the camp and local church host, and to provide prayer and on-going encouragement as the community recovers.