Day 40 of Spend it Well’s Timor-Leste Flood Relief

The Covid situation in Timor has deteriorated significantly, with over 230 cases diagnosed on each of Thursday and Friday and the capital Dili subject to a hard lockdown.  This has impacted our flood relief work directly over the last couple of weeks as a small number of Sabeh’s volunteer workers have been diagnosed with Covid.  Although most of Sabeh’s volunteers tested negative, as close contacts they all had to quarantine at home and Sabeh’s headquarters was subject to a deep clean.

40 days since the flood there are still many people without food and adequate shelter, so we did a huge purchase of US$28,132 of food and supplies yesterday for 253 students stranded in Dili and 424 families in Aileu, Laclubar, Bidau and Tasi Tolu.  We have also purchased US$4,685 of medicine for Sabeh to use for people affected by the flooding.  There are a massive amount of items in this purchase and it will take a lot of this week to sort, package and distribute them.

The marginalised students who live in the boarding houses in Dili are normally supported by their families in the districts.  Some of those students have been able to return home, but many have not.  These students, many of whom are female, lost their beds, books, clothes and cooking materials in the floods and are now staying in several boarding houses with no money or support.  MAHON is a local non profit which supports youth and training and has been working to find ways to support these students.  We have purchased food and supplies for MAHON to distribute to 253 of those students.

Items bought yesterday are:

750 mattresses
1,500 blankets
525kg of second hand clothing
18,950 kg of rice
750 packs of biscuits
840 bottles of cooking oil
28,000 packs of noodles
760 packs of coffee
768 tins of beef
750 x 1kg packs of flour
720 packs of sanitary pads
1,000 packs of salt
750 x 1kg packs of sugar
1,000 cans of sardines