Letter to National Disaster Agencies in the Philippines and Indonesia on Bridge Funding for Micro Businesses

To: The national disaster management agencies of the Republic of the Philippines and the Republic of Indonesia

From: Gregorio Yap, Chair, Resilience Council, Tacloban, Philippines; and the Rapporteur, Resilience Council

Bridge funding for micro businesses after disasters

To the officials responsible for national disaster management in the Philippines and Indonesia:

We write on behalf of the Resilience Council of Reseated, the Founders Assembly: a global assembly of small-business owners. We are writing to share a defined body of anonymized evidence and to ask your agencies to consider a practical bridge-funding response for micro businesses whose operations are interrupted by disaster.

Our request is specific. We ask that emergency arrangements provide a route to bridge funding within ten days of a declared disaster for eligible micro businesses facing an interruption to trading. This is not a request to replace insurance, existing relief, or national disaster programmes. It is a request to reduce the period in which a viable small business has no operating cash while it waits for a claim, an assessment, or other recovery support.

Who we are and what we can offer

Reseated was launched on 10 February 2026. It is a nonprofit, organized as seven councils. The councils describe recurring practices and problems reported by members; they do not represent or accuse any single company. Members remain anonymous unless they choose a public seat. The Resilience Council’s work

concerns the ability of small businesses to prepare for, withstand, and reopen after disruption.

Our process is intended to distinguish a repeated problem from an isolated account. Reports are assessed against five elements: volume, frequency, consistency, spread, and corroboration. A proposed response can then be developed, opened for public consultation, and submitted to an Assembly ballot. Letters to decision-makers follow that process where appropriate. The Council’s current request on reopening and continuity is a proposal under examination, not a claim that a standard has already been adopted by the Assembly or by either government.

We can contribute anonymized, aggregated information from member reports. We will not send identifying details about individual members or their businesses. Our purpose in offering the data is to assist agencies in understanding the timing and practical consequences of interruptions, and to help identify whether a response is reaching the smallest firms.

Evidence as of 29 June 2026

As of this letter’s date, Reseated had 1,010 members in 49 countries and had received 2,796 reports from 50 countries. The Resilience Council had 82 members in 37 countries. It had received 61 resilience reports from 31 countries. All 61 reports concerned a disaster situation.

The median amount at stake in the Resilience Council’s reports was approximately US$5,000.

The reports came from a geographically dispersed group. Among the countries with the highest report counts were the Philippines, with six; Japan and the United States, with five each; the Netherlands, with four; and Mexico, Spain, Canada, and Nigeria, with three each. The Philippines’ six reports form part of a wider set of accounts in which disaster-related interruption is a reported small-business concern across countries and regions.

In the Resilience Council’s member information, 44 percent of reporting businesses were described as having a team size of “Just me,” 41 percent as having two to nine people, and 15 percent as having 10 to 49 people. Thirty-one Resilience Council reports had been filed in the 30 days preceding the data snapshot.

These reports provide a basis for asking whether a period without operating funds can turn physical damage or temporary closure into a longer interruption for a small firm.

Policy context

The international policy context includes the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030. Its paragraphs 30(o) and 36(c) address the integration of business continuity into business practice, with particular attention to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. The Council regards continuity planning and access to short-term liquidity as connected parts of resilience: a plan may help an owner prepare to reopen, while funds may be needed to pay immediate operating costs and carry out that plan.

UNDRR has reported that small and medium-sized enterprises bear approximately 75 percent of business disaster losses, and that disaster risk reduction can reduce losses by up to one third.¹ A UNDRR report also cites a Japan METI survey in which 8 percent of prepared SMEs had not recovered sales, compared with 19 percent of unprepared SMEs.² These findings underline the relevance of preparedness and continuity.

Requests to the agencies

We respectfully ask each agency, within its own legal and administrative framework, to consider the following steps:

1. Establish or identify a rapid bridge-funding route. Please consider a mechanism through which eligible micro businesses affected by a declared disaster can access temporary bridge funding within ten days of the declaration. Where a new mechanism is not appropriate, please identify an existing route that can meet the same practical need and explain how an affected owner can reach it.

2. Define the purpose and duration of support. The proposed funding should address urgent continuity needs during interruption and early recovery. These may include essential operating expenses and costs directly connected to reopening. The terms should state whether support is a grant, recoverable advance, loan, or another form of assistance; the period covered; and any repayment conditions. We do not propose that all businesses receive the same amount, or that the reported median of approximately US$5,000 be used as a standard award.

3. Design an application that a micro business can use. Please consider a short application route, plain-language eligibility information, and a means of applying when normal records, premises, or communications have been disrupted. The process should explain what evidence is acceptable when ordinary documentation is unavailable or damaged. It should also explain how applicants can ask questions, correct an error, and learn the reason for a decision.

4. Publish a clear time standard. Please consider publishing the expected time from application to decision and from approval to disbursement. The Council’s proposal is that bridge funding be available within ten days of a declared disaster. We recognize that agencies may need to distinguish the declaration date from the date an individual business can submit an application. If so, the public guidance should state the trigger, the steps required, and the expected time at each step.

5. Connect bridge funding with insurance and other assistance. Please make clear whether and how a business can apply for bridge support while an insurance claim or other relief application is pending. Where another programme is expected to provide the same support, the applicant should be told how the programmes interact and what happens if the other payment is delayed, reduced, or refused. A temporary route should not create an avoidable gap simply because the final amount of a claim has not yet been decided.

6. Include continuity support alongside cash support. Please consider practical continuity-planning assistance for micro businesses, including guidance that can be used before and after a disaster. Such support should be proportionate to a very small firm’s staff and resources. The Sendai Framework’s attention to business continuity, particularly for MSMEs, provides an international policy reference for this work; the design and delivery of any national programme remain matters for the competent authorities.

7. Make access and results visible. Please consider publishing, in aggregate, the number of micro businesses applying, the number approved, the time taken to decide and disburse, and the broad reasons for refusal. Where feasible, results should be separated by business size, location, and sector without disclosing personal or commercial information. A modest public record would help agencies and affected communities see whether the route is timely and usable.

8. Consult owners and local delivery partners. Please include micro-business owners and relevant local organizations when testing the application and payment process. A mechanism may meet its formal deadline yet remain inaccessible if an owner cannot understand the criteria, provide documents after a disaster, or identify the office responsible. Testing the process with intended users can reveal these barriers before a future emergency.

9. Identify a contact point for technical discussion. We would welcome a designated office or contact point in each country with which to discuss the evidence, data safeguards, and practical questions raised by this letter. We ask that any response clarify whether the agency can consider the proposal directly or whether it should be referred to another competent authority. We do not ask for an endorsement of Reseated or its proposed approach.

Data offer and safeguards

Reseated is willing to provide an anonymized summary of the Resilience Council reports recorded as of 29 June 2026, together with a description of how the figures were counted and what they establish. The summary can include the overall counts, country distribution, reported amount-at-stake median, team-size categories, and reporting period described above.

We will not identify members, disclose their businesses, or attribute a report to a named company. We will not present an individual report as verified evidence of a government action, an insurer’s decision, or a particular disaster’s total effects. Any further data sharing should be agreed in advance, limited to a defined purpose, and reviewed to reduce the risk that a small group or individual could be identified from a combination of details. We are also willing to discuss a summary format that is useful to your agencies without transferring individual-level records.

Closing

For a micro business, the time between a disaster and the arrival of usable support can matter as much as the eventual amount. A short, transparent bridge-funding route would give owners a clearer way to manage the first period of interruption while assessments and longer-term recovery decisions proceed. We recognize that the design must fit each country’s law, institutions, and existing programmes. Our request is that the practical need be examined and that the route available to an affected owner be made clear before the next emergency.

Annex: Evidence and reference sources

1. Reseated internal data snapshot, 29 June 2026: member and report totals; Resilience Council membership, report counts, country distribution, amount at stake, team-size categories, and recent reporting count.

2. Reseated, RC/RS/2026/1, Call for evidence: Resilience Council agenda item RS-001, 10 February 2026.

3. Reseated, RC/RS/2026/S.1, evidence submission, 7 March 2026; and RC/RS/2026/S.2, evidence submission, 5 May 2026.

4. Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, paragraphs 30(o) and 36(c), as cited in the Reseated evidence dossier.

5. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), information on supporting disaster risk reduction and resilience practices for small and medium-sized enterprises.

6. UNDRR, Resilience of SMEs Report, including the Japan METI survey comparison cited above.

Notes and sources

1. UNDRR, supporting disaster risk reduction and resilience practices for small and medium-sized enterprises. ^[2] UNDRR, Resilience of SMEs Report, citing the Japan METI survey. ↩

Sources

1. UNDRR — Supporting disaster risk reduction and resilience practices for small and medium-sized enterprises
2. UNDRR — Resilience of SMEs Report
3. Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, paragraphs 30(o) and 36(c); URL not supplied in the context