In 2013 Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines, leaving 6,000 people dead and five million homeless. Three years later, money donated by Catholics in England and Wales is helping the resilient local women to rebuild their lives and livelihoods

Christmas decorations hanging from the ceiling of Smiley’s Meat Shop, on the Philippine island of Leyte, move in a breeze that brings welcome relief from a temperature of 34 degrees Celsius and high humidity. The little shop on a dusty highway is owned and run by women whose lives were decimated when Typhoon Haiyan hit the country, wiping out their homes and livelihoods over the course of one long November night.

Three years on, its fridges are full of cuts – chops, belly, feet and livers – from pigs raised and butchered by women trained and supported by the Church aid agency Cafod and its partners in the Philippines. Business is brisk, with customers flooding through the doors throughout the time I’m there; the women are cheerful and confident and hopeful for the future.

The shop’s success is evidence of the fact that restoration in many villages is well underway. Because of this, Cafod and many other international NGOs are preparing to pull out: but what sort of country will they leave behind?

Erlinda Lucero Alao, a formidable 64-year-old who presses one spongy rice cake after another into my hands as we sit inside her small hut, manages the association of 115 women who run the meat shop. She also bakes and sells rice cakes from door to door and processes the rice using a wooden machine that looks like the frame of a car. The machine also extracts coconut meat and cassava – it’s diversity in action, just like Erlinda.