Women help build houses in Aceh

Women help build houses in Aceh

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

To coincide with International Women's Day, the world's largest
professional women's organization, the Soroptimist club, launched
a program to build hundreds of houses in a village in the
tsunami-hit Aceh province to help ease the burden of the
survivors.

"Soroptimist International of Jakarta (SIJ) hopes to be able
to provide assistance in the form of rebuilding 200 houses, 36
square meters in size," Lily Kasoem, the project director for
Rebuilding Lamreh Village (RLV), on Tuesday.

SIJ, an Indonesian branch of Soroptimist International,
initiated the RLV project in January and since then has been
gathering international support, including obtaining the approval
of the Aceh administration to build the houses.

The project will be officially inaugurated on March 11 in a
ground-breaking ceremony, which will be attended by Coordinating
Minister of People's Welfare Alwi Shihab.

Soroptimist is an organization aiming to encourage women to
serve their community. The name derives from the Latin words
soror (sister) and optima (the best), and thus means "women at
their best, helping others to be their best".

To date, the organization has collected US$435,000 of the
total of $800,000 needed to finance the program. The money has
come from 11 donor organizations, which have already pledged to
support the project. Some of the largest donors included the
Netherlands Red Cross, the Women's International Club, the New
Zealand International Aid Agency, Oxfam and
PriceWaterhouseCooper.

The organization chose Lamreh village because it has the
largest number of survivors compared to other villages in Aceh
Besar regency, where 1,000 people survived and 70 were killed,
but 80 percent of the houses were damaged.

Aside from providing houses, the SIJ also planned to build one
primary school, a community health clinic, a community hall,
wells to supply clean water, sanitation and electrical
infrastructure in the village.

In order to garner more financial support, the SIJ organized a
benefit luncheon at the Hotel Le Meridien on Monday afternoon,
which was attended by 200 guests, mostly expatriates. Each guest
paid Rp 150,000 as a donation to the program. Overall, they
collected more than Rp 100 million as many donated more than the
Rp 150,000.

Canadian ambassador Randolph Mank attended the luncheon and
was mentioned by SIJ members as one of the sponsors for the
gathering, together with the Hotel Le Meridien.

"This is an organization which consists of fewer than 20 women
who want to help the victims of the natural disaster and they
have shown me their capacity to help the Acehnese. We should
support them -- women are good about bringing people back
together in the disaster area. That's why I support Soroptimist,"
Mank said on the sidelines of the luncheon.

Lily Kasoem, who is also known as the owner of a chain of
eyeglasses shops of the same name throughout Greater Jakarta,
said that this project would also serve to convey a message to
women across the world.

"Small groups of women can make a difference, so start helping
the Acehnese to help themselves...now," Lily, one of the 19
members of SIJ, implored. (006)