Left: Flood survivors enjoying merienda at Samaritana
Right: Relief goods included rice, milk, canned food, drinking water, school supplies and cleaning materials.

On September 25th, Samaritana sent a team of six to one of our partners, RENEW Foundation (www.RENEW-foundation.org) in Angeles City, for a joint training session on conducting outreach, and exposure to the situation of prostituted women there.  The two teams shared experiences, encouraged one another, and explored new ideas for outreach activities in their respective settings.  Although Samaritana's team had originally planned to join an anti-trafficking march in Angeles the next day, they decided to go home early because of an impending typhoon.  While they were on the bus heading back to Quezon City, Typhoon Ondoy hit Metro Manila and surrounding provinces. The highway exit was flooded, and they were stranded on the bus for over 10 hours.

Nearly 80% of Metro Manila was under water as Ondoy brought a month's rainfall in just a few hours. The flooding that ensued led the government to declare a state of calamity, as the death toll rose to over 300 and hundreds of thousands were displaced. Less than a week later, Typhoon Pepeng wreaked havoc over northern Luzon leaving over 500 dead, hundreds of thousands again displaced, and many crops destroyed. Nearly everyone in the northern part of the Philippines has been affected by one or both of the storms.  

Samaritana's community was no exception. One volunteer's house flooded to nearly the second storey and she lost many belongings. Another waded through waist-deep waters to reach home where her roommates had been trapped for twenty-four hours.  One trainee’s daughter was stranded in a northern province, as she anxiously prayed for the waters to go down. The stories go on and on…

It has now been a month since the floods.  The typhoons have passed, but they leave lasting repercussions and memories. Complete recovery for some will take months, if not years. In the past several weeks, Samaritana has concentrated on identifying typhoon victims among women in the streets and the bars. These women who suffered significant losses as a result of the typhoons were invited to attend Samaritana's fellowship on October 23rd, when basic needs such as drinking water, canned food, clothing and cleaning supplies were distributed. Cash donations from concerned friends in the US, Canada, and the Union Church of Manila, together with rice donated by Philrads (the relief and development arm of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches), are enabling Samaritana to offer relief and assistance to the storm victims. The response to the storm victims’ needs have also brought an opportunity for our women trainees to serve and give to others.