As part of its continuing relief response to the disaster, World Vision recently distributed food packets to 100 families around Dharbanga raiway station, one of the places affected by the recent floods. This is a hub for about 100 porter families who come from neighboring villages and eke out a living loading and unloading luggage from the trains that pass by this station.

"This food pack will help me provide food for my family thrice a day," said 50-year-old Dinesh Yadav, who has been working as a porter for nearly 25 years. "There is still ankle-deep water in my house, and we have to cook on the cot," he said.

"This is a population that lives from hand to mouth, and are normally neglected," said Shyam Kishore, who is the government official in charge of the relief operations. "We have seen the quality work done by World Vision and so we wanted them to help this community," he said.

"Unlike the farming communities whose lands have been flooded, this community lives in the slums surrounding the railway station, and their settlements have been washed away," Logun said.

World Vision has so far been able to reach out to 12,807 families with food and non-food relief.

"World Vision plans to cover relief operations to 14,343 families by the first week of October," says Chitti Babu, a World Vision aid worker in Dharbanga.

Once the relief phase is over, World Vision will provide water purifiers to individual families to ensure safe drinking water and begin implementing livelihood recovery programmes like 'cash for work', to help stabilise the economic input," according to Logun.