Apart from planning relief missions, we are also knee deep into our collaboration meetings with the local leadership. So just to give a glimpse of the leadership groups and essentially every group over laps every other group in more than 1 areas.
So to serve to confuse you further, there are essentially 3 groups of leaders in the village. 4 to be exact.
1 ) Village heads and chief of village. (Yes its different people, tirbal judge if you may)
2 ) Sub-district government officials (The people who are elected by the hilltribe to manage development)
3 ) Sub-district medical centre (The people who are providing medical care under the government)
4 ) Clan heads (The people whose work involved culture and disputes)
Yes its not easy. But we're looking at ways how we can serve not only the people but also work together with the leaders to help the community at large. For the last 4 years, they have stayed an arm's length and this year is a year of breakthroughs with awesome responses from the leaders.
Today we did a mass relief distribution and distributed 500 blankets + relief bags to the most needy villagers in the community. It was heartwarming to see the leaders labouring alongside us as we serve the people.
The distribution was timely. Freeing up important space at the STK Shelter for our ministry work. We still have a whole lot of items to be distributed, but there are just so many needs. We need wisdom to know where to push these items so we can reach the most people. And time is really not on our side, rats are known to infamously chew through our boxes and make nests in these cozy boxes during winter !
So we are juggling both the collaboration plans and the humanitarian relief work. And not to mention we have a whole lot of paperwork to juggle with ! Unlike larger NGOs who have a bunch of administrative staff working to support the field staff, here its just 3 of us; Shirleen, Alvin and me.
So yes the workload is extremely heavy, but our donors financial giving this year truly encouraged us in this journey of faith. Though the nights are long working on papers and the less "exciting" stuff, but I guess its worth it each time you see a life being reached, each tear of gratitude you see.
Thats reward enough for me.
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