In the next two years, AmeriCares aid to Japan will help:
• Restore access to health services • Provide counseling to help survivors cope with trauma and loss • Assist evacuees • Support people with disabilities
Japan Recovery: Rebuilding Lives, Restoring Hope
Within hours of the deadly March, 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and radiation disaster that shattered millions of lives in northeastern Japan, AmeriCares mobilized a large-scale emergency response, with air shipments of medical and humanitarian aid that helped countless survivors in need.
Today, our Japan team remains firmly on the ground– with an office in Sendai and a plan of action to fill crucial healthcare gaps and bring needed help to a nation still working hard to recover from an unimaginable catastrophe.
Collaborating closely with Japanese partners, we have provided $3.2 million in aid that has made a life-changing difference to devastated communities in a disaster zone where more than 300,000 people still live in temporary homes.
Today, we are building clinics, delivering hot meals and supplies, transporting volunteers, and bringing comfort and counseling to the displaced and distressed. Looking ahead, our recovery programs will:
Just one year after the worst natural disaster to ever strike Japan, AmeriCares has been hard at work helping survivorsregain their health and rebuild their lives. Partnering with local NGOs, we have provided $3.2 million in aid that includes:
In Japan, countless lives have been forever changed by a disaster that transformed thriving communities into desolate wastelands. From the beginning, AmeriCares focused on filling urgent health care gaps, restoring health services and meeting the needs of vulnerable populations, especially mothers, children, elderly evacuees, and the disabled.
Based inside the disaster zone, our team has a keen insight into the needs of survivors, interacting daily with people who lost everything—suddenly and permanently wrenched from the only homes, families, and friends they ever knew.
Our goal is to do our best to deliver the help they need to move forward and prosper. Looking ahead, we aim to build on the progress we’ve made in four key program areas:
Restoring access to health services
Supporting counseling services to help survivors cope with trauma and loss
In the aftermath of epic disaster, AmeriCares continues to expand recovery efforts in the Tohoku region of Japan, with continued focus on behavioral health, resettlement, and reconstruction.
A new dental clinic in Ogatsu, Japan, funded by a $220,000 AmeriCares grant, helps fill an urgent health care gap in the wake of the March, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The clinic is one of three funded by AmeriCares, serving a population of more than 10,000 people.
AmeriCares is helping evacuees battle isolation and its accompanying health risks. In Kesennuma City and nearby towns, AmeriCares works with Nippon International Cooperation for Community Development (NICCO) to deliver hot meals to blocks of temporary houses, while at the same time identifying people at risk.
In January, 2012, 1,300 families received electric space heaters funded by a $250,000 grant from AmeriCares. The grant, awarded to partner, Association for Aid and Relief, in response to an emergency request from the Japanese government, covered the purchase of heaters for the displaced living in temporary apartments throughout the hard-hit Miyagi Prefecture.
An AmeriCares-sponsored community garden program helps 350 residents in the small coastal town of Ogatsu plant flowers and crops where their homes once stood.
Stamford, Conn. – March 5, 2012 – AmeriCares is awarding $1 million in aid for disabled survivors as well as relief workers suffering from work-related stress and depression in Japan. The announcement comes on the eve of the first anniversary of the tragic earthquake and tsunami. The $1 million in new projects is in addition to the $3.2 million in aid AmeriCares delivered in the first 12 months after the disaster.
AmeriCares helps to restore dental care access for 10,000 survivors of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. Support for the construction of two dental clinics in this devastated northern town is one of our many targeted programs to repair the severely damaged health care system in the region.
A special AmeriCares delivery of relief supplies to help thousands of families still living in temporary housing arrives in Japan on Sunday, December 25.
AmeriCares is approved by the Internal Revenue Service as a 501 (C) (3) tax-exempt organization, and all donations are tax deductible to the extent provided by law. AmeriCares Federal Identification Number (EIN) is 061008595.
