On December 6th, the Philippines experienced another devastating typhoon. Typhoon Hagupit also known as Typhoon Ruby made landfall just one year after the super storm Typhoon Haiyan (or Yolanda), which displaced 4.1 million people and took more than 6,300 people’s lives as well as damaging or destroying more than a million houses. The region, which has not completely recovered from the previous storm, was devastated once again. Fortunately, authorities were able to evacuate more than 650,000 families from the area before Typhoon Ruby. While the storm was less devastating than Typhoon Yolanda, damages to newly repaired houses, buildings and streets brought back food shortages and other hardship to the still-battered communities of Eastern Samar, Samar and Northern Samar.
To immediately address the needs of those affected, Embracing the World in collaboration with the Philippines Disaster Relief Foundation (PDRF) donated supplies for 2,000 relief packages for survivors. PDRF volunteers distributed the relief packages to 10 villages in Dolores, Eastern Samar. The relief team was based in Tacloban and most of the volunteers were Yolanda survivors themselves who had once been recipients of our relief packages just one year before.
