New York Sisters Rebuild Indonesian Town Destroyed by Tsunami

Wednesday December 13, 2:16 pm ET

51 Homes, Water System, Market, Women's Center Rise on Site of Destroyed Village in Aceh Province. Mark Second Anniversary of Deadly Catastrophe With Pledge to Expand Their Work

NEW YORK, Dec. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Two New York-based sisters with long experience working and living in Indonesia have rebuilt a town in Aceh province devastated by the 2004 tsunami and are now turning their attentions to rebuilding surrounding towns.

Sara Fraad Henderson, later joined by her sister, Martha Fraad Haffey, spent several hundred thousand dollars of their own money to set up Building Bridges to the Future, which in the aftermath of the tsunami "adopted" the town of Rumpet, located in the Lamno subdistrict about 95 miles west of the provincial capital of Banda Aceh. The village, which once had 500 residents, was left with 170 survivors after the tsunami.

"I couldn't stand by and do nothing when people in Aceh were in such desperate straits," said Henderson, a grandmother who spent 16 years as a banker in Jakarta. "We've completed our work in Rumpet but there are so many others who need the same kind of help and we want to provide that."

Under the rebuilding wing headed by Henderson, 51 homes and a women's center have been built in Rumpet to provide housing for remaining villagers whose homes and livelihoods were wiped out by the tsunami. A nearby local market was rebuilt. A well water system with five distribution points from which to draw the water is at the completion point, and work has begun to assist villagers in purchasing land to rebuild six additional villages in the Lamno subdistrict of Aceh Jaya. Land purchase is complete in one of those villages, and the goal is to complete the land purchases by the end of 2007.

Under the social work wing headed by Haffey, a scholarship program has been established to provide training for community activists and child welfare specialists in conjunction with programs in about 30 colleges and universities around Indonesia, centered in the capital of Jakarta. Already five scholarships, at a total cost of about $4,000, have been funded. In addition, Haffey is seeking to work with publishers and others to translate basic social work texts into the Indonesian language to allow that training to go forward.

They have spent about $500,000 so far, including about $200,000 of their own money, and want to expand their work.

Every dollar donated to Building Bridges to the Future goes for direct assistance, as Henderson and Haffey personally underwrite all administrative costs.

Information on their work is available at http://www.buildingbridgestothefuture.org.