Rekompak : Rebuilding Indonesia's Communities After Disasters

Rekompak is Indonesia's innovative community-based model for post-disaster housing reconstruction, created and adapted through the Multi Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias (MDF) and the Java Reconstruction Fund (JRF) between 2005 and 2012. It was created as a consequence of the many devastating natural disasters that struck Indonesia between 2004 and 2010. The disasters caused massive loss of life and injuries and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes, infrastructure facilities and livelihoods. In addition, more than one million people were displaced. The Government of lndonesia and development partners agreed that a community-based approach would be used for rebuilding houses and community infrastructure, first in Aceh and later in Java. This document presents the key elements of this approach and relays the experience and lessons learned in the course of implementing and scaling up the Rekompak housing reconstruction efforts in Aceh and Java. Rekompak built upon existing mechanisms and expertise and these were scaled up many-fold to meet reconstruction needs. While the concept of community-based reconstruction was not deemed to be the ideal method under the circumstances, it was implemented nonetheless, and its tremendous success is evidence of the efficacy and benefits of such a reconstruction model.