Caritas Mayanmar hands over Nargis cyclone relief operations to locals

(January 22, 2011) Caritas Myanmar, the Catholic Church’s social arm in the south Asian nation has ended three years of emergency relief services following the devastating Nargis cyclone of 2008 and handed over responsibility to local villagers. Caritas Myanmar, known as Karuna Social Service, staged the handover to the Village Development Recovery Committee (VDRC) at a special two-day ceremony held at the Sacred Heart Minor seminary compound in Mayanchaung, Pathein diocese. The responsibility for continued recovery efforts in Nargis affected areas are now in the hands of local villagers. About 100 VDRC members from 21 villages in the Irrawaddy Delta attended the “evaluation and handover” gathering, Thursday and Friday. Father Henry Eikhlein, director of Karuna in Pathein diocese (KPSS), described the gathering as a meeting of family members and to hand over Karuna’s tasks to the villagers thereby ending one chapter and starting another. Raymond Soe Lay, a KPSS livelihood project worker noted that the villagers were able to draw up development programs with them during the two day programme. Bishop John Hsane Hgyi of Pathein observed it is good to be self-reliant and free from depending on others. It is time for the villagers to take responsibility and work for the development of their own villages, he said. More than 140,000 people were feared dead and hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed when Cyclone Nargis struck the delta in May 2008.