NGO Collaboration Center for Hanshin Quake Rehabilitation

SOURCE: SEEDS Asia SitRep 8 dated 3/24/11
http://www.seedsasia.org/eng/sit_8.pdf

"- The NGO collaboration center for HANSHIN QUAKE Rehabilitation/CODE: providing food in Natori city, Miyagi prefecture"

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SOURCE: The Yomiuri Shimbun3/19/11
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110318003879.htm

Volunteer operations start in hard-hit areas

Volunteers distribute rice balls and crackers to evacuees at a middle school in Sendai on Thursday.

Volunteers from across the nation this week have started relief activities in the areas struck hardest by last week's massive earthquake and tsunami.

Nongovernmental organizations established after the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake embarked on providing support to disaster victims at evacuation centers and other places. In Sendai, the municipal government established a volunteer registration center.

Some areas suffered such serious damage in the disaster that their local governments have been unable to set up their own volunteer registration systems.

Ahead of the three-day holiday starting Saturday, the influx of volunteers to disaster-stricken areas has been continuing at a swift pace. It is expected citizen volunteers will be able to engage in voluntary work throughout the three-day weekend, including Monday's vernal equinox.

"As damage was inflicted over a wide area, it's difficult to set up an operation base," said Masamichi Yoshitsubaki, 43, a volunteer at the Collaboration Center for Hanshin Quake Rehabilitation, a Kobe-based NGO providing volunteer relief operations. The organization was formed after the Great Hanshin Earthquake hit the southern part of Hyogo Prefecture in 1995.

Yoshitsubaki is an experienced volunteer who worked to support victims after the Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu Earthquake devastated the central region of the prefecture in 2004, and a powerful earthquake occurred in China's Sichuan Province in 2008.

After the Tohoku Pacific Offshore Earthquake occurred March 11, the organization's three staff members left Kobe in a rented car.

Last Saturday night, they arrived in Natori, Miyagi Prefecture, where they helped to distribute food to disaster victims at a primary school in the city.

On Monday, they traveled to Minami-Sanrikucho in the prefecture, 75 kilometers from Natori. After assessing the local conditions, they set up an operation base at a municipal gymnasium in Yonezawa, Yamagata Prefecture, where residents living near Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant had taken shelter.

"They're short of food. The prospects for restoring the electricity and water supply are still far from clear. We're trying hard to think about what we can do to help on a long-term basis," he said.