Fewer than a dozen Israelis live in Vanuatu, but Natalie Silverlieb moved there a year ago to become a local director for the humanitarian aid agency IsraAID. She now oversees a large-scale water infrastructure development project funded by the World Bank.

IsraAID arrived to help after a hard hitting cyclone left the island without clean water, food, medicine, and electricity, and as schools, homes and crops were all destroyed.

In Tongoa, the chief of a small village broke down in tears as he described to the Israeli crew “it’s been ten days since the disaster, and these are the first supplies we have received.”