I've raised £100000 to rebuild the village of Kerandangan, Lombok and provide interim aid.
Organised by Alison Stringer
Story
Following our successful fundraising last week to help one family in the Lombok village of Kerandangan, we now want to raise money to help more people and rebuild more houses in Kerandangan. Please see the summary below and also for more details see our dedicated website at: www.justonevillage.com
At least 94 houses have been totally destroyed by the 7.0 earthquake on 5th August, and the subsequent strong aftershocks. There has been only one fatality in the village to date – a situation surely owing to the timing of the main shock at 7pm when few people would be inside their small houses.
The whole village are currently sleeping under makeshift tents that are in no way watertight and we are probably just a few weeks away from the rainy season. It has already rained on the night of 19th August. We are hoping very much that the government or aid agencies will provide proper tents soon, but so far there has been no sign of this and it seems it will be many months before this is given out - see News section on www.justonevillage.com).
As there has been much more devastation in villages nearer the epicentre, with roads damaged and many deaths (inevitably more than the 387 counted so far), the focus has so far been on these communities.
As Erwan and I have many longstanding friends in Kerandangan who are now homeless, and others good friends who are in a position to help on the ground, we want to focus our efforts at fundraising on the one village of Kerandangan. As some families will hopefully be helped by their western-owned employers (hotels, private individuals etc), we have set up a Messenger group of mainly expats to share information about who is helping who in the village, to make sure donations do not overlap. The aim is to document the destroyed houses and their owners of the whole village and we will update photos and stories on our facebook pages and below as they are received and information on distribution of aid.
The Indonesian President, shortly to commence his re-election campaign, has announced compensation of up to Rp50m per house (£2,700). We are concerned that this will not be enough, given the inevitable building materials and labour cost inflation. If there is much delay there is also a high risk of diseases spreading as the rainy season can start any time from September onwards. Two weeks after the disaster and with no tents distributed by the authorities (only 1,300 in total in Lombok so far) it doesn’t take a pessimist to feel that private fundraising needs to fill the gaps fast. Please therefore help us to reach our target and forward this link to your online networks.
If this fundraising is successful and in any way results in surplus funds to what is needed (highly unlikely!) we will donate the remainder to our close friends Francesco (Cecco) Bruno and his colleagues at Autore who are focussing on areas further afield. We know they will carry on this work as long as there are donations available, see https://www.gofundme.com/npx5ee-lombok-earthquake
About the fundraisers: Alison Stringer and Erwan Manansyah live in Barnstaple, North Devon. Erwan is from Mataram, Lombok and we have lived in Kerandangan for over 4 years, leaving in 2008, but returning each year for up to 6 weeks each year since. Alison works in an online business serving the reinsurance sector, owned by Euromoney Institutional Investor Plc. Erwan is a self-employed sports coach and also musician, mainly entertaining residents of care homes for the elderly in North Devon. We still have close links with many people in Kerandangan (and in fact just spent 4 weeks there, leaving the day after the first quake struck on 29th July). In the last week we have been online for many hours talking to people to find out what’s going on day by day and who has lost what. We are fortunate that none of Erwan's family have lost homes or livelihoods. We promise that no funds raised will go to paid help, other than builders rebuilding people’s houses. We hope you will trust us to spend donations wisely and will post regular updates.
