Families around the world will remember today the devastating effect of the Asian tsunami, when around 230,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands were injured or left homeless.

Three years after the disaster, aid organisations in the Indian Ocean area believe there is plenty of work still to do despite success in rebuilding ravaged communities.

Immediately after the catastrophe, the UK's Disasters Emergency Committee launched a nationwide appeal for funds for humanitarian relief and quickly raised more than £390m.

Around £400,000 has been donated by Scots to the Hikkaduwa Area Relief Fund, set up by Glasgow businessman Neil Butler and backed by Glasgow City Council.

Fundraising efforts have supported local fishermen and businesses, re-equipped schools and backed volunteers such as doctors and nurses.

Progress in rebuilding communities is being made but because of the scale of the problem people are still living in temporary shelter. Around half a million people were made homeless in Aceh, Indonesia, alone. International aid agencies launched one of the biggest emergency responses in recent memory in an attempt to stabilise countries ravaged by the natural disaster.

After the initial emergency phase, where aid agencies asked for money to rescue people, the rebuilding phase started slowly. Dominic Nutt, of Save the Children, said: "In terms of the response - given the circumstances and given what we know about the response to Hurricane Katrina - all the aid agencies have done pretty damn well.

"We need to emphasise this change will not happen overnight, this will take a long time. The reality now in the next year or so is that we need to hand it back to the people on the ground - to the Sri Lankan and Indonesian governments. There's only so far you can go as a foreign organisation."

Save the Children brought immediate life-saving relief, including food, water and emergency shelter, to 625,000 people and has continued to support the hundreds of thousands of individuals in more than 1000 towns and villages that were affected.

The rebuilding process has been slow but results are now starting to materialise. Unicef's 2007 Tsunami Monitoring report highlights that more than 330,000 people are being educated in Aids and HIV protection, 20,000 water points, serving 730,000 people, have been restored and 1.2 million children are now engaged in psycho-social activities.

A report issued by the UN last month also showed that progress was positive.

Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, director of the Indonesian national executive agency for rehabilitation and reconstruction, told the UN that in Aceh and Nias there were twice as many village clinics for the affected population required by national standards, while 64,000 hectares of agricultural land had been rehabilitated, exceeding the 60,000 hectare target originally set.

Oxfam last week said it had spent £109m on disaster recovery work while helping more than 2.3 million people in seven countries. They have helped construct wells and water systems in Aceh, aiding 40,000 people, while in Sri Lanka 240,000 people have benefited from Oxfam-run programmes that help people earn a living.

However, the rebuilding process is not without its problems. In a number of the areas hit by the tsunami there is conflict and corruption which make the aid agency's work all the harder. Sri Lanka was badly hit in the east of the country, particularly Batticaloa which is less than 200 miles from the capital Colombo.

However, it takes 12 hours to get there because of military road blocks and problems with Tamil Tigers militants. Due to the conflict in the country there are around 140,000 refugees, which slows down the tsunami rebuilding process.

Eight aid workers were also killed in Sri Lanka last year. There is a problem with land titles in the poorer areas, where disputes have arisen as to who owns the land when houses have been swept away.

Mr Nutt said: "There is a curfew at 7pm and you don't want to be moving around.

"You will hear gunfire at night in the towns and this is the environment in which you're trying to work."

Somalia is even worse, he said, while Indonesia has a problem with corruption, particularly in the construction industry.

One of the biggest problems is accessing hard-to-reach isolated areas, such as the Indian Andaman and Nicobar islands, because of their remote location and because access is restricted by tribal captains. The rebuilding of the villages and towns will be a slow process, particularly if the countries involved remain generally unco-operative and hostile.

For the aid organisations to be successful, it needs to develop co-operation among the communities affected and their governments, and make sure the region can truly recover - by itself.