The NGO Uplink Banda Aceh was established shortly after the tsunami largely destroyed the infrastructure and a large proportion of the population of Banda Aceh province in Indonesia. This paper describes this NGO’s work, which began with post-disaster emergency relief, but quickly moved into promoting and supporting community organizations in a network of 23 villages as they tried to rebuild their lives.

Banda Aceh has been described as being hit by two tsunamis; the second was the surge of unplanned, unregulated and uncoordinated international aid that came into the city shortly after the first tsunami struck, destroying existing social structures. Pressure on international donors to spend money, the belief that using contractors was the most effective way to construct housing, and an over concentration on physical reconstruction meant that donor/aid organizations reconstructed villages according to their own specific agendas, undermining the social attitudes and structures of the surviving communities in the process.

This paper describes how Uplink Banda Aceh took on the challenge of helping these communities reassert their independence and sense of social cohesion. It began by ensuring people’s basic needs were being met, then organized people so that they could start making their own decisions, planning their own communities and reconstructing their lives (in every sense) according to their needs and priorities. This “reconstruction of life” approach meant using housing and infrastructure as the entry points for building people’s capacity, for their participation, for trauma healing and for ensuring their self-determination and independence. The paper also considers what kinds of international assistance would have supported such an approach.