Yolanda relief guide shared with stakeholders

WHEN Supertyphoon Yolanda hit northern Cebu and Central Visayas nearly three years ago, Cebuano economist Miguel Barretto Garcia was in Barcelona, Spain finishing his master’s degree in economics and finance.

Rather than feel helpless, Garcia, who earned an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of San Carlos, helped thousands of Filipinos get the relief they needed.

“I noticed one thing about relief operations. There is a lack of informed decision-making that either leads to oversupply or undersupply of relief aid. That’s why when Yolanda happened, I wanted to help prevent it,” Garcia said.

He told those in attendance in yesterday’s multi-stakeholder forum at SM City Cebu’s Conference Hall that he helped design a data set that helped foreign relief groups determine the material aid needed and which areas need it the most.

Garcia was with students of Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, who are in a three-day immersion in Cebu.

Garcia’s data set uses four key indicators—poverty incidence pre-disaster, population density pre-disaster, proximity of the area from the center of the typhoon, and storm surge height.

This way, Garcia believed there are fewer chances of relief aid going to waste or of relief aid not reaching areas that were also affected by the disaster.

International organizations that picked up his data set during the relief operations for Yolanda were Doctors Without Borders (MSF), United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), American Red Cross and United States Agency for International Development (US AID).

Liloan mayoral bet  Christina Garcia-Frasco, who led the #BangonOrmoc relief operations, said the insufficiency of the national government’s response and local politics led her to pool her own resources and begin her own relief operations in Ormoc City whose mayor is her father Edward Codilla.

Student leader Bret Balbuena of the University of San Carlos credited project centralization, project branding, dedication of the volunteers and an organized database of people for the success of the “United for Visayas #USCUnite #BangonBayan” relief operations in northern Cebu.