By January 16, 2006, the funds gathered by AMU for the Southeast Asian disaster has reached about € 1 million. The amount has been allotted mainly for projects in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India. Aside from the projects already under way, new projects are being studied for future implementation.

The funds were gathered from all over the world; in many cases, they came from the little that a large number of people could afford: for example, from children from Kenya, Colombia, Russia and many other countries where giving away just € 1 is already a great act of generosity.

Below is the report of Stephen Comazzi, AMU representative, who traveled to the site, a year after the Southeast Asian disaster:

I went to make an on-site visit to the different projects being carried out by our volunteers and collaborators in the area. I traveled with a group of European youth of the Focolare Movement who already had carried out AMU projects in favor of Indonesia.

They had started at Nias Island, south of Sumatra, where they had opened work camps to help rebuild a village and to animate a large number of activities for children. Then they proceeded to the province of Aceh, the hardest-stricken area, in the northern tip of Sumatra Island.

I was appalled by what I saw in Banda Aceh and in the nearby village of Lampuuk, where some Indonesian Focolare youth had lived for weeks with the local population to help out. Months after the disaster, a lot of things have changed, but remnants persist as a reminder of the extraordinary force of nature, such as a huge ship which the waves had carried from the sea up several kilometers inland, demolishing a whole neighborhood. Entire districts of Banda Aceh, like the village of Lampuuk, have turned into stagnant swamps, completely razed to the ground.

The entire population is Muslim, and our young collaborators have gained the people’s  esteem and friendship, which expresses itself in small, caring gestures. A house offered to them free of charge – which has become a lodging for a large number of us – is an eloquent example. With AMU funds, a project to build fishing boats has been started at Lampuuk.

In Medan, the most spread out city of the island of Sumatra and one of the main cities of Indonesia, I got acquainted with AMU collaborators – Christian, Buddhist and Muslim youth who belong to the Focolare Movement. Their being together is already in itself an impressive living witness, not to mention the fact that not all of them are Indonesians; for example, there is J.P.W., a Malaysian student who has interrupted his university course for several months now in order to dedicate himself full-time to managing and organizing current activities as well as to helping his collaborators with visa procedures.

In the southern part of the province, just beyond the boundaries of Medan and Aceh, there  are several fishing villages. Also the people here have become “friends” of our volunteers, and they welcomed us warmly at our arrival, with a banner from their newly-formed association called SILATURRAHMI (meaning, “everybody’s welcome”).

Our young Indonesian guides had already met them in their previous trips to this place, and had shared the few goods they had, and above all, listened to each person’s story, to the survivors’ accounts of suffering and bewilderment. Thanks to AMU funds, these young people returned subsequently, now equipped to organize the work of reconstruction and revival together with the villagers.

Still in Aceh province, in the villages of Blang Nibong and Padan Kasab, we personally saw how many fishing boats had been completed and how many are still under construction. The people of Blang Nibong were waiting for us to officially consign the first ten boats to beneficiaries chosen according to the number of members in the family (large families  were given one boat while smaller families shared one boat) and according to the damages they had undergone. Our young guides attended the launching of one of the newly-built boats, after which we all went for an inaugural tour on the hot sea of Malacca.

I would say that this trip was indeed meaningful. It made us believe even more how important it is to work “with” the people, the grassroots, giving utmost value to listening and to sharing in their lives; one finds out soon that this listening and sharing becomes reciprocal.

(taken from the AMU NOTIZIE newsletter,no.4/2005)

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