BOTOLAN, Zambales?More than a year after two severe typhoons displaced thousands of residents here and sent them to evacuation centers, this town is still a community in distress.

Socorro Dedicatoria, 62, said she was still mourning the death of her husband last year when Typhoons ?Ondoy? and ?Pepeng? struck in August and October.

?I lost everything. I thought [losing my husband] was hard enough, but when the flood destroyed my house that was too much. Now, I am living in an evacuation center and I don?t know how I can get out of here. I have nowhere to go,? she said.

Dedicatoria?s children have either fled to other provinces or are living in other evacuation centers. ?They now have lives of their own. I don?t want to be a burden. I just hope that I find enough [resources] every day to feed myself and a child I have adopted. There are only two of us in the tent where we are staying. I wish I have enough strength left to send [my adopted child] to school,? she said.

Rains have started again and every new weather disturbance brings them the threat of further misery. Joel de Guzman, 35, a school teacher, said the typhoons hit the elderly and the children ?really hard.?

School children

?It?s difficult for the children to go to school. For instance, here we teach mostly students of evacuees, and their parents have barely enough for the family. Some students have dropped out, their parents opting to use what little they have for food instead,? De Guzman said.

But ?there is still danger? for the 200 students under his care, he said.

?Our teachers are nervous but there?s nothing we can do because our elementary school building in the village [of Carael] was covered in mud and sand due to the floods. It was severely damaged. Now we are teaching the children in a facility borrowed from a mining company,? he said. The facility was not built to accommodate ?many people, and there are a lot of us here,? he said.

?It?s a makeshift school, whose walls may be in danger of collapsing. The second room floors are leaking because the entire structure is not [sturdy or well maintained],? he said.

Asked why this was not addressed by school officials or the local government, De Guzman?s reply echoed the sentiment of many: ?We have no choice. We have so many needs but we do not have that much resources.?

Florabel Villanueva, 38, a spokesperson for the largest group of evacuees here, said families in the evacuation centers can ?either feed ourselves or do what else is necessary to improve our situation.?

?But always finding food to put on the table wins and everything else is [not prioritized], even our safety,? she said.

Since last year donations have gone dry at a crucial time when refugees must fend for themselves, she said.

Villanueva said they need a permanent shelter. ?Having somewhere safe to go home to is the most important thing. It?s raining again, and we are fearful that another Ondoy or Pepeng will come to add to our misery,? she said.

Botolan Mayor Nerma Yap confirmed the refugees? situation, saying her ?priority now is to find shelter for all of them.?

?When Typhoon ?Basyang? came [in July this year], the winds blew away 40 tents and damaged a lot more. We are looking for materials to give to the refugees so they can repair those damaged tents,? she said.

More than 300 houses funded by Department of Social Welfare and Development are about to be completed, she said. ?In fact, about a hundred houses [in the resettlement site] are already occupied by the evacuees. The rest are [about to be] finished,? she said.

Food-for-work program

Botolan now has a food-for-work program for the evacuees, Yap said, so they can finish the houses in the resettlement site.

She added that the Department of Public Works and Highways has completed repairs of the Bucao River Dike, which was breached at the height of the floods last year.

?It remains to be seen whether the dike can withstand the [full force] of a major typhoon, so we are still not giving clearance to the residents in the affected areas here to go back to their homes.?

Isagani Ecle, social welfare officer of Botolan, said despite the donor fatigue among private companies and individuals, ?we secured 384,300 metric tons of rice from the United Nations World Food Program. But our approach is different now. Instead of giving doles, we are designing different projects to be implemented in the affected areas.?

An evacuee who takes part in the food-for-work program is given 10 kilos of rice for each day of work on projects at the resettlement site.