89 Homeless Families Move Into Temporary Housing

The Triple Gem Society tsunami housing project has successfully completed 70 family units in five different locations. We are delighted to inform you that we now have a Triple Gem Camp No. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

These camps are actually large buildings, composed of up to 20 individual one-room family units. As you might understand to accomplish such task is challenging and require lot of coordinating efforts and hard work. We have to working with my monk colleagues and government officials and contractors . The problems that we run into are nany. To accomplish this project quickly and efficiently, we hired 3 different contractors simultaneously. In this way we were able to complete these five large buildings during past two months.

There are still thousands of homeless families waiting for temporary shelter. In some areas it will likely take a minimum of one year before permanent housing is available for them. These poor people who have already lost so much are getting tired of living in crowded holes or at times in leaky tents without proper facilities for basic hygiene.

Our main priority was to get as many homeless as possible out of the constant misery of the crowded refugee camps which offer no privacy or personal space. It is always difficult to decide which families to select among the hundreds, because every person deserves a clean private place to call their own. Even so, we had to choose only a few. We gave priority to single mothers with young children and pregnant women.

Most of these people come from good families and had stable jobs before tsunami. They have had their predictable lives shattered in a single unexpected moment, As we try to help them I constantly witness their devastation and sorrow. I often notice how my happiness in helping them gets pinched by the experience of the pain they hold in their hearts. For example when we give a room in our new camp to a homeless father who lost his children and wife I know that our small deed does not solve his enormous problems. At times I have had bad dreams caused by this paradox of happiness and sadness.

Currently 25 more units are being built and we hope to welcome in the new families by the 10th of April. We will continue our efforts to help.

Once again I would like to thank you for your kindness. We can accomplish these things with a small team of monks and friends because of your generous support of the TGS work. I would like to encourage your continued support of our post-tsunami efforts. Please take the time to look at our photo gallery on the web page.