Volunteers show way to help storm victims

Gemma Pestanas wants to repay the kindness shown to her by strangers through the only way she knows how.

Pestanas, 53, and two other women in their 50s do laundry for an American and other volunteers who had helped rebuild her and her neighbors’ homes in Barangay Amantillo here after these were destroyed by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” on Nov. 8 last year.

“This is my simple way of thanking them for their hard work and self-sacrificing spirit,” said Pestanas, crying.

On April 11, Pestanas received the key to her new house, which was completed in five days.

The houses were among the more than 200 that had been built and turned over to victims of Yolanda in Samar, Eastern Samar and Leyte provinces. There are hundreds more waiting to be built.

The construction sites have become a virtual trade school where Yolanda survivors learn the basic and advance construction techniques from experts.

The free exchange of ideas, skills and technology is made possible through the building program set up by the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses, called Local Design Construction (LDC), which has been building hundreds of modest yet livable houses for fellow believers and their families who lost their homes to Yolanda.

Volunteerism

Through LDC, members of the Witnesses skilled in construction travel to Yolanda-stricken areas at their own expense to help fellow believers, according to Dean Jacek, spokesperson for Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Philippines.

The volunteers include engineers, architects, electricians and skilled craftsmen.

LDC uses a quick-build method in which a team of eight volunteers spend five days constructing one house using local, inexpensive and quality materials.

Most survivors, who volunteered in the construction, had little or no background in building houses.

Some are fishermen, farmers, drivers, market vendors, students, office workers or small businessmen before the storm surge wrecked their houses and their livelihood.

But after spending days or weeks in building projects, they learn carpentry, masonry, framing, roofing and painting, among other skills.

One of them is Irish Calixtro, 22, whose house in Tabango town, Leyte, was destroyed by the storm.

Calixtro offered to help others rebuild their houses after she was able to help build a new home for her family. She underwent training in prefabrication of metal studs from Ismael Requilman of Pangasinan province, one of the volunteers.

“I never thought I could be trained in construction but I did it. Thanks to my trainer who traveled from Pangasinan at his own expense to help survivors like me rebuild our lives,” she said.

Local officials and residents have been visiting project sites and are impressed with the work that neighbors are putting in.
On-the-job training

Some volunteers likened the experience to on-the-job training programs. The project site in Barangay Bolosao in Lawaan town, Eastern Samar, could serve as a perfect image of what was being accomplished.

Eight women from the town are now adept at using power tools, drilling anchor bolt holes into walls, cutting metal studs and painting houses.

They credited American volunteer Seth Alexander Ferguson for their new-found skills.

Ferguson, who learned to speak the local language, said it was easy to teach people in the community new skills.

In exchange, Ferguson said he found a “family away from home.”

“I’m overwhelmed by their hospitality, faith and love. They serve me delicious native dishes,” the American volunteer said.

“I’ve never been hungry here,” said Ferguson, who had spent 12 years building homes for tornado and storm victims in the United States.

Misty Wilson, 42, of Florida, has been volunteering in construction work since she was a teenager.

But when she and her husband Blair went to Leyte, they were impressed with the ingenuity of local volunteers.

“They lack tools here but they can always come up with alternative solutions using whatever materials are available. I’m learning from them and we learn from each other,” she said.