Japanese Red Cross Society

The Japanese Red Cross Society is providing each home with a refrigerator, washing machine, rice cooker, microwave, hot water dispenser and television. The project is being funded by cash contributions from National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies around the world. So far, the equivalent of 34 million US dollars has already been received by the Japanese Red Cross from National Societies overseas. More than 188,000 people are still displaced by the disaster. Most of them are staying in over 2,200 evacuation centres spread across 17 prefectures, with the vast majority in the three worst-affected prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima. Although people are returning to homes that survived the disaster as electricity and water supplies are restored, the centres continue to house so many people that a number of them are likely to stay open for months to come. Whilst the Red Cross is making efforts to improve the living conditions in these centres - such as measures to create family spaces and more privacy with partitioning - the prefabricated homes will be a major step towards easing the pressure on evacuation centres, allowing people to return to some semblance of normality.