ULLE, Sri Lanka — After two weeks of dispensing medical aid, food and other necessities to tsunami victims, a clutch of relief workers, business owners and foreign philanthropists gathered in a local bar to mull some of the stickier issues facing this ravaged town.
Would standard temporary group latrines be accepted in this Muslim community, where men and women traditionally insist on separate sanitary facilities?
How could local fishermen -- many of whom are now terrified of the sea -- be coaxed back into the water to resume their livelihoods?
And how could home-building equipment and materials be delivered when the only bridge into town had been torn in half by the battering waves?
At the center of the discussion was a small team of workers from Relief International, a Los Angeles-based aid organization. Since the deadly waves struck Dec. 26, killing more than 160,000 people in southern Asia, the group has been assisting those left behind. Ulle, a town of 6,000 where up to 2,000 people are believed to have died, is one of the group's main concerns.
Relief International has proceeded on three tracks.
First, it sent three physicians to the hinterlands of Sri Lanka to dispense medicine and note longer-term needs.
Second, it established headquarters in the capital, Colombo, to coordinate with government officials and other aid groups. The workers there amassed care packages of food and water and arranged transportation in a land where there are no highways, only narrow, congested roads.
And third, back in Washington, the group's executive director, Farshad Rastegar, began to solicit U.S. grants for continued aid work -- even meeting with President Bush -- so that the group could still help those in need after the catastrophe faded from the nightly television news.
The group will soon launch a cash-for-work program in Ulle, financing house reconstruction and sanitation projects.
"The goal is to pay people to help themselves, to put the money in their hands," said Jack Welch, a Relief International coordinator in Bangladesh who was the first from the group to arrive in Sri Lanka.
The program is going to pay workers an average Sri Lankan salary, which is about $80 a month.
Relief International has responded to disasters in places such as Turkey, Afghanistan, India and Iran. Although the group prefers projects that focus on women, children and minorities, each relief effort presents its own demands.
