Architects of Their Own Recovery

Disaster-affected communities are and should be the architects of their own recovery, not merely passive recipients of international goodwill
by Imogen Wall

"In the days after Cyclone Nargis in Burma, survivor Kyaw Kyaw was desperate. His house had survived the cyclone - just. But what if more was coming? Kyaw needed to know. Desperately poor though he was, he and two other families scraped together US$5 - enough to purchase something they saw as vital after the disaster: a small transistor radio. "We don't spend a single day without listening to the weather report", he says. In these days of saturation coverage when a major disaster hits, we are all familiar with what devastated populations need. Or rather, we think we are..."

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