RedR

Jake Zarins recently became a RedR member after attending RedR‘s Essentials of Humanitarian Practice course, back in 2005. He's had a somewhat unconventional route into the world of relief work.

After completing a biology degree, Jake wanted to get into the environmental sector and had worked as a volunteer in both Kenya and Swaziland while holding down a job with a London company which designed and built specialist architectural aquariums.

Jake happened to be on holiday in southern Sri Lanka in December 2004 when the tsunami struck South Asia and he became heavily involved in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. This experience was to change his life. Shortly after being evacuated back to the UK, he set up a charity, returned to Sri Lanka and then started working full time for a community-based organisation. Working as an implementing partner for Concern, CHF International and other agencies, he got into the areas of water, sanitation and shelter, for which his experience in the construction of aquariums came in strangely useful!

In 2006, he worked with Oxfam in Banda Aceh for ten months, initially as a Shelter Coordinator and then in general Programme Management, before moving back to Sri Lanka with Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

Currently, Jake is working in Liberia, managing a project constructing schools and repairing water and sanitation facilities as part of the return and reintegration of refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) displaced by the conflict which ended in 2004. The project involves a great deal of community input: they are entirely responsible for the construction and, therefore, have greater ownership of the project. This means that they also take responsibility for maintaining the structures once built. Jake and his team provide training to the community members on how to maintain the buildings and in other relevant areas such as health promotion and community management processes.

Jake has found relief work to be challenging at times but, ultimately, highly rewarding and enjoys seeing interesting places at interesting times: “Moving between continents and constantly having to adjust to different cultures is challenging”, he says, “Working with agencies that have western cycles and timescales in countries that don’t work like that is also difficult.” Despite these challenges Jake has no plans to stop working in the relief sector.

As well as attending RedR’s Essentials of Humanitarian Practice course and a number of the Environmental Health courses, Jake undertook one of RedR’s security trainings which provided essential information and understanding for his time spent working in a conflict setting.

Through the past four years he has encountered many RedR members in his work and has received support, as well as access to skills and knowledge, and has seen first-hand how skills can be transferred from the private to humanitarian sector.

Shelter Construction in Sri Lanka

Between August and December 2007, Jake worked with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Sri Lanka undertaking a pilot programme to provide 213 shelters to families returning from displacement following hostilities between government forces and the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam) in a region of eastern Sri Lanka.

The design and process used was based on the owner-driven construction of a small yet permanent ‘core’ shelter, at a similar cost to that of a semi-permanent shelter and which could be expanded at a later date by the people living in the shelter as their circumstances allowed. The project was viewed as a success and has been expanded into other areas of Sri Lanka with other agencies also taking on the design and approach.

The initial phase of the project enabled members of the target community, such as Siragamy and her husband Vettivel, to move back into their community. Due to the conflict last year Siragamy and Vettivel fled to Vaharai and stayed for two months in a tent before being forced by further fighting to Sinnaurani camp in Batticaloa, where they lived in a temporary shelter for eight months.

Siragami was affected by paralysis three years ago. Now she can’t move without someone to help her, and her hands and legs have limited sensation. She likes the core 200 shelter, and has planned to expand the shelter further as soon as possible. The cement bags to do this have already been purchased. 

For Siragami and her husband this is now a permanent home, and she thinks it is a big improvement from their old mud hut that was damaged during their displacement. She liked the methodology used to build the house because it gave her husband the possibility to work, and they used the labour payments to buy more cement to expand the shelter.

A full report of the work Jake undertook in Sri Lanka is available here