EMACE

“Our country has been given a huge opportunity in terms of development. It is like being re-born again. Who knows what will happen?” I am sitting across from Rajiv Da Silva, an environmentalist and one of the EMACE consultants. His sentiments are echoed by nearly everyone I meet and most things that I read. In the midst of this tragedy, many are seeing a great opportunity.

It has been two days since I arrived in Sri Lanka as a volunteer for the post-tsunami rebuilding efforts. I am working with a local NGO by choice. I am here in the lull between the emergency of the immediate clean-up and the redevelopment of the affected areas. The lull is when we try and find funding for the different projects that have to take place for the affected people to have lives again: rebuilding homes, creating environments that have economic and developmental sustainability so that people can once again live with dignity.

There is a despair in the temporary shelters. Dignity, the most precious commodity at this point, is something that has to be built, to be bought at some level for the displaced.

I am here for three months. Chances are by the time I leave that reconstruction will have started. The disco glitter of aid work is one that will elude me. I am working in an office. People are disappointed when they hear about this back home. No dead bodies, no building houses. I am working in an office, writing all day, piecing together whatever information I can to get aid here. To get the aid that will build the houses, jump start a lifestyle, put all the pieces back together again.

Sri Lanka, much like Indonesia, is dealing with the hard hit areas of the tsunami in rebel areas. The north and east, which are predominately LTTE (Liberation Tamil Tiger Eelam) areas have been utterly devastated by the tsunami. Aid has become a political tool with which both the state government and the LTTE are manipulating to control the people.

In a country which has already been devastated by three decades of civil strife, this manipulation adds a whole new dimension to the problem of aid dispersal. Days ago, the political wing leader of the LTTE, S.P. Tamilchelvan refused to work with a joint task force that would include the opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, international donors and the Sri Lankan government.

It was an unprecedented move by the Sri Lanka government to invite the LTTE leader since it would bring the LTTE into the governmental fold on making decisions and debating the relief efforts faced by Sri Lanka. The refusal could have been based on two factors. First, there is the LTTE’s past repeated efforts to work with the government and realizing the task forces talk the talk but achieve little to nothing. Another more plausible reason is the LTTE’s complete ideological control over the Tamil Nation and not wanting to act just as a player on a joint task force.

This second factor points directly to the main sticking point between the LTTE and the government which is one of power sharing. The LTTE has proposed a detailed agenda of an Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA) which the government is begging off with vague responses. The LTTE will not resume peace talks till this matter is discussed and resolved in some manner by the Sri Lanka government.

This poses a huge problem for the LTTE controlled areas which consequently have been the most affected areas. Funding from the US, India and the UK is going through the government and none of it will go directly to the LTTE controlled areas since the aforementioned countries do not recognize the LTTE and its jurisdiction. The bulk of reconstruction needs to take place in LTTE areas. The bulk of the aid money is with the government.

The government, I am told, is busy with infrastructure: roads, schools, electricity and water. All valid but then again, there are reports of riots in Matura where people took to the streets since they hear about the millions in aid and have yet to see a penny. Only 30% of the money has made it where it should have. In the 70% left over there are stories of government officials siphoning off money to relatives falsely claiming to have been affected by the tsunami. I don’t mean to be cynical, since I am not one by nature. However, there is much to indicate that if left to the government, rebuilding and reconstructing lives in Sri Lanka is going to be an aggravating and less than adequate endeavor.

These issues alone prove why local NGO’s such as EMACE are so important.

EMACE is a local NGO based in Moratuwa which is 15 kilometers south of Colombo, the metropolis in Sri Lanka. EMACE stands for Environment & Science, Manpower & Skills, Adult & Parenthood Development Assistance, Childcare & Women’s human rights, Education & Culture. The acronym is strange and garbled but their mission is not.

The organization started in 1970 and has been doing progressive work in terms of community development working with marginalized communities. EMACE is busy these days setting up partners with other NGO’s based in Sri Lanka, the UK and the US. The current ethos in development and aid circles is that post-tsunami rebuilding is not just about building houses, it is about rebuilding lives.

EMACE is busy pulling together proposal outlines not just for housing but for economic, environmental, sociopolitical, cultural and community development. Thinking and building along the lines of a holistic environment is already part of EMACE’s ideology. Since its inception, EMACE has been working to bridge relations between ethnic communities while helping those who have been displaced because of three decades of civil war.

The post-tsunami rebuilding is the same work but on a much larger scale.

One of the more ambitious projects that EMACE is tackling is that of re-housing 850 families in the Batticoloa area, in the east. They have chosen families where women are the sole heads of the household, there are pregnant mothers or families with young children. The government is handing out plots of land to different NGO’s and it is the responsibility of these NGO’s to reconstruct homes. EMACE has a team of consultants that range from architects, to environmentalists that hold meetings with the families to discuss not just the layout of the house but also ways in which it can be environmentally sound and ways in which the family can be self sufficient.

Alongside the housing project, EMACE is engaged in legal advocacy for women. Women are held back in Sri Lankan society through social and cultural mores especially in the rural areas. Widows lose all legitimacy over their land and often find it difficult to be able to sustain their livelihood as the sole breadwinner of the family. Legal obstacles for women were a problem in war torn Sri Lanka where many men were killed and it remains a problem with the tsunami.

While these services had been a focus of EMACE prior to the Tsunami, they’ve become much more of a focal point since. Many are heading back to their properties without any papers since they were washed away and it is becoming increasingly more difficult for women to claim what is rightly theirs.

The work I am involved in is all about initiative. I am slowly figuring out how I can be most effective and the staff here is open to suggestions and ideas. As a result, I will be traveling to affected areas and talking with the local leaders of the respective communities and assessing their needs and trying to match them up with partner organizations in the United States.

EMACE has only one US partner and it is my job to find more. To write to them about what I have seen and how they can and must help. I am only peripherally familiar with this type of work and it will be a trial and error process but one that I am confident will be able to help people here rebuild their lives. It is a globally local process. I will talk to locals here, I will talk to locals I know in New York, in New Jersey, in Houston and through the many list serves that I am a part of. It is one of the most important ways in which I know how to work.

My work here is infinitesimal and insignificant in the face of the larger issues that ordinary Sri Lankans must come face to face with. Many of the people that I have spoken to have told me about the difficult decisions Sri Lankans have to make about the direction of their country. With the aid and reconstruction comes a chance for peace and stability. With people, like Ravi, seeing the aftermath of such a terrible disaster as a great opportunity and with organizations, like EMACE, working to realize such an opportunity, there is a fragile sense of hope. It is a hope that will play out over the next few months and perhaps lead to a country that will feel re-born.