Flooding in Oro

This month we also witnessed devastating flooding in the Oro Province, affecting many communities that were still trying to recover from the devastating impact of Cyclone Guba two years earlier. The Kokoda Track Foundation received reports of thousands of individuals affected by the flooding and responded immediately with a joint disaster relief effort with the Anglican Church in Popondetta. 

Whole communities continue to struggle to gain access to basic food and clean water and the first priority of the response was to distribute these supplies to the worst affected areas. The Foundation’s on-the-ground partners, the Anglican Response to the Oro Disaster team, identified 55 villages that were in urgent need of food, water, and medicines.

The Kokoda Track Foundation committed 11,000 Kina to the disaster relief effort which was coordinated by the Anglican Response to the Oro Disaster team, chaired by Bishop Joe Kopapa, head of the Anglican Church, Popondetta. The funds are now being used to purchase and distribute rice, tinned fish, and clean water to priority communities

After the 2007 cyclone that ravaged the Oro province, the Kokoda Track Foundation funded the establishment of a large-scale Seed Nursery Project (Northern Province Food Restoration Program). The Foundation’s seed nursery team has imported and multiplied urgently needed strains of agriculture and are currently distributing them throughout the Province to communities that are trying to rebuild their food gardens. In 2010 we will link this program to those communities that have been affected by the recent flooding throughout the Province and will continue to provide relief in the form of food, water, medicines and strains of urgently needed crops.

Please keep them in your thoughts this Christmas as they struggle to rebuild their food gardens.