Voices from communities relocated to Tacloban North after Typhoon Yolanda

Super Typhoon Yolanda caused destruction across the Philippines and devastated communities in Tacloban City on November 8, 2013. Recovery programs in Tacloban City focused on relocating people away from heavily damaged coastal areas to new housing in resettlement sites in Tacloban North. Using an asset-based approach to consider residents’ perceptions and evaluations of their living environments and children’s schooling in these resettlement sites, and with a hypothesis that schools might function as a community asset, this research explored connections between residents’ housing sites and the roles of schools in communities five years after Yolanda. Carried out in February 2019, this research combined interviews with individual households and Focus Group Discussions with residents from four resettlement sites in Tacloban North. Preliminary findings confirmed the existence of various active connections between schools and local communities in resettlement sites, and that residents perceive schools as a community asset. As housing relocation and children’s schooling are connected and have mutual impacts within the lives of families in post-disaster resettlement, findings support the importance of post-disaster coordination of housing and education, especially in cases of relocation and displacement.