Response to floods in the Ayeyarwady River delta

When floods once again deluged parts of the Ayeyarwady River delta in Southwest Myanmar, where CWS partner with communities for ongoing development initiatives, more than 7,300 people were badly affected and so CWS moved into emergency response mode. Immediately, with AmeriCares funding, each affected family received 2.1 kilograms of rice per person, and other food was given by other organizations. When our Country Representative, Yoko Ito, was talking to  Yu Yu Naing, who was holding her 3-year-old daughter and looking lost during the flood response, she said, “I just want to have a safe place to live … the riverbank erosion is making our village disappear”. In fact people have moved their houses further inland several times in recent decades, and there is almost no safe place for them to live now. But, when she was talking to Yoko, Yu Yu Naing was most worried that she and her husband now have no jobs, and so no money for food, because flooding has inundated the rice paddy where they were working for a day wage. Since their only way to get food now is by buying it form a shop on credit, Yu Yu Naing was thankful for the rice, which will last for a week or so, and add to the canned fish and other food that other aid groups were sharing.