A year after typhoon Yolanda’s vicious onslaught in many parts of Eastern Visayas, millions still find themselves homeless, with survivors starting to lose hope of ever rebuilding their lives as they witness this administration’s bumbling efforts in speeding up rehabilitation. Many have leveled down their expectations at the kind of assistance they will ever receive from the national government, remarking that the number of those who perished have yet to be correctly determined and remembering how President BS had chafed at suggestions that the figure could reach 10,000. Many of us can still clearly recall how the president downplayed the estimates to about 2,500 in his interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

Fortunately, private corporations are stepping up and doing the work that government should be doing, like providing homes for those that were displaced by the super typhoon. A shining example is SM Prime through SM Cares (a division of the SM group’s corporate social responsibility arm SM Foundation) that recently turned over 200 homes to families in Bogo City, Cebu.

The 200 is actually just the first of the planned 1,000 houses to be built in four SM Cares housing villages located in Bogo, Concepcion in Iloilo, plus Ormoc and Tacloban in Leyte. Except for Tacloban which will have 400 houses, all the other SM Cares villages will have 200 homes each. Each SM Cares Housing Village will have utilities, basic amenities like streetlights, a community center and a basketball court. Aside from being disaster-resilient, the houses also have heat-resistant painted roofing to help lower interior temperature and increase energy efficiency. The windows and doors made of aluminum frame and PVC provide a high level of resistance to corrosion, rot, chipping, fading, insect assault, discoloration and other potentially damaging conditions.

Beneficiaries could not hide their gratitude at seeing the homes that have been designed way above the standards set by the current Building Code to make them disaster-resilient. Each home, painted in vibrant and lively colors, has 3,000 psi (pound-force per square inch) concrete walls and roof slabs. According to those familiar with tensile strengths and other building terms, the 3,000 psi can withstand wind strength that accompanies a Category 5 super typhoon with the homes most likely not suffering major material damage. The homes built via SM Cares are definitely a far cry from the miserable-looking square hovels that the government had built to shelter the survivors, one of our buddies couldn’t help commenting.

The SM Cares Villages are concrete proof that for many companies, the bottom line is not the be-all and end-all of everything as many private corporations donated to help SM build 1,000 homes in the areas that suffered the most damage in the wake of typhoon Yolanda, with the donations amounting to P200 million or thereabouts. What’s also admirable is the way the companies have anticipated the other needs of the survivors. SM Foundation and the Ramon Aboitiz Foundations have teamed up to provide livelihood assistance to the beneficiaries and help ensure the sustainability of the village and its residents. Values formation programs and social services are also provided for the survivors who have yet to fully recover from the pain and trauma brought by the killer typhoon.

“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned,” the late poet Maya Angelou had written in All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes, underscoring the need not only for physical comfort but for survivors to regain confidence and equilibrium—something that the Aboitiz Foundation can help with through community seminars to promote good values and encourage volunteerism and cooperation among families that would help them move on with their lives and become productive members of society again.

SM Prime president Hans Sy, who believes that businesses should incorporate disaster risk reduction in the equation, reiterated the commitment to help survivors of the super typhoon not just in terms of providing them housing but giving them the opportunity to rebuild their lives. Happily noting that the beneficiaries in Bogo will be able to spend Christmas in their new homes, he expressed fervent optimism that their efforts would give survivors renewed hope that would go a long way in helping them rebuild their lives.

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