About Disaster Relief
Natural or man made calamities like earth quakes, floods, cyclones and fire accidents are unpredictable and they change the lives of those affected for the rest of their lives. Escaping from the horrifying embrace of death, they find it more difficult to survive with the threat of a bigger disaster – disease, homelessness, poverty and orphan-hood looming over them. Disaster-relief efforts require rapid response and quite often OBI is the first organization to respond. To ease the suffering caused by the disaster, OBI takes instant and effective relief measures and initiates emergency disaster relief activities whether it is within the country or abroad.
OBI provides disaster assistance in two phases:
1. Immediate relief with focus on saving lives, clearing the rubble or residue of the disaster, giving the necessary medical attention, providing food, clothing and relief material such as utensils, blankets, hygiene-kits etc.
2. Long-term development in which OBI provides support for the affected people’s lives to be restored and works towards reconstruction of their lives, homes and livelihood.
OBI strives to provide immediate disaster relief affected people, so far 231119 affected people received help from OBI in the form of temporary housing, cooked food, food grains, essential items like clothes, cooking stoves, blankets, medicines and medical treatment.
To be effective Operation Blessing India sets up relief camps immediately after the disaster as in the Tsunami affected areas, Earthquake affected areas of Kashmir and Gujarat and floods affected areas of Maharastra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Mumbai and Hyderabad. OBI also catered to victims’ of the fire in Hyderabad
Shanti Devi – I’m so happy my child is alive!
Shanti Devi would go into depression whenever she thought about the miscarriages she had. If her babies were alive she would have had nine children. Instead she had only one living daughter Sandhya who is 3 year old. She wasn’t...
Ramavathy - Hope is born in distress
Being pregnant was an ordeal for Ramavathy since the whole region was flooded and there wasn’t one dry spot for her to rest. Ramavathy lived in Bakahari village in East Champaran District of North Bihar. The whole village was...
Little Shravan’s boils will heal now
One year old Shravan was wailing away in misery. He had boils all over his body and his mother Dhanusha was trying her best to comfort and console him but there wasn’t anything she could do. Outside it was pouring relentlessly...
Bihar Floods: Manju Devi – back to life from the brink of death
The OBI team received the news that Cholera had broken out at Athapur village which is about 25 km from Raxaul in Bihar while they were involved in relief work to the flood affected areas.
Bihar - OBI Flood Relief
Weeks of incessant rains in Bihar have caused heavy floods in North Bihar. 126 people are feared dead while over 12 million people spread over 19 districts have been adversely affected. The worst affected districts are East and...
Rebuilding life from the ashes of despair
As Asha and Meshram were walking back home that hot evening in May, at a distance they could see a thick black cloud of smoke billowing its way across the sky. For a moment they were stunned because they hadn’t seen anything like...
Smiles after tears
Little Pratima sometimes gets into a pensive mood remembering the life-changing event that happened three years ago. She was just five years old then and she could barely understand what was going on around her.