Bringing Real Hope to Orissa

The ongoing violence spelled out huge losses to life and property in the 14 districts of Orissa. Open Doors with your support has brought healing and hope.

The first phase of relief distribution was initiated in early September 2008.

The districts of Gajapati and Koraput were targeted in partnership with various NGO’s and Churches. Since entry in Kandhamal (the most affected district) was prohibited and curfew was imposed, this gave us some time and opportunity to plan out the relief work there and also to focus on other affected districts.
Initially, non-food items and essential commodities like clothes, blankets, bed sheets, utensils, toiletries and bibles were distributed as most of the families had shifted to the government run relief camps where meals were being supplied to the victims.
Later on families were identified who were living outside the relief camps and food items were supplied for them.
With time, more reliable NGO’s were identified and partnered for carrying out the relief in their respective areas. A total of 783 relief packets were distributed in partnership with Good Shepherd Mission, Evangelical society and other local churches. Open Doors in partnership with the Light Foundation supplied other 1000 relief packets directly to the beneficiaries which contained both food and non food items.

Phase –II was more organised and planned since the LF team had gained some experience in distribution and logistics.

The rapport with the traders helped in timely supply of items. This phase had 1000 packets of same commodities as in Phase I distribution. At this stage Open Doors established a ware house at OCTC (Orissa Christian Theological College) campus at Gopalpur to solve the storage problem.  We rented a big dormitory which helped us to stock the relief supplies
 

One of the requests that we regularly had from camps was for better food.  Each day the people were served Rice and Dal (lentil soup) for their meals twice a day. For breakfast often the leftover rice was given. There had a constant request from the camps to arrange for a non-vegetarian meal, which unfortunately was denied by the government considering its cost.

 Summary of Relief Phase III