Back to School (Support for Tsunami Affected Children)
(Version 1, Updated 11th March 2005)

Background

The Dec. 26th Tsunami’s has impacted lives of people all along the coast in various ways. Children have suffered from this tragedy. Their schooling has also been impacted. Many children have lost their school books, notebooks, uniforms etc. The schools play an important role in returning to these children a sense of normalcy. It further provides them a secure environment away from their home. Thus it is important that we get the children these materials so that they can resume their normal schooling activities.

Note the government of Tamilnadu has promised/given the following things for affected school children. Note these are given only to government and government aided schools. Also all the materials (esp. the uniforms) have not been given to all the schools.

• Books for all classes.
• Notebooks for 6th and above (not in sufficient quantity).
• One set of uniforms 

The schools that have been identified for support by Asha, are schools where a majority of the children are affected by the Tsunami. In such cases we do not think it makes sense for us to distinguish children who are affected from those who are not. The children who are not affected are also usually from poor families and even if they have not lost their possessions, they have often lost their livelihood because of the disruption it has caused in the community (through moving to shelters, through the stop in the fishing trade, etc.). Therefore we intend to distribute these materials to all children in schools where a majority of the children are affected by the Tsunami. In a couple of cases the intended beneficiaries of the project are not children of a specific school but children from an affected village that go to different schools.

There is no plan for long term involvement with these schools. The volunteers (they are the people who have identified the needsworking in these areas plan to follow up with the children in these areas at least once a week, do In a case with a couple of schools we are looking at working with them with our longer term plans to improve government schools.

Schools Identified

Since this list is continuing to expand, we are treating this as an open ended project. The list of schools and children actually helped as part of this project is captured elsewhere and would be posted in the webpage along with this proposal.

We would limit the total support to Rs 6 Lakhs unless more money comes in earmarked specifically for this project (i.e. not for general Tsunami relief activities).

Support Details & Budget

For each student we intend to provide the following,

1. Note books for children – The notebooks varies starting at 2 ruled, 1 unruled, 1 maths and 1 drawing notebooks for classes 1 and 2 to 1 unruled, 2 long composition books and 6 long unruled 200 page notebooks for classes 11 and 12. 
2. Pencil box for all classes with pencils and pens (higher classes).
3. Colour pencils and crayons for children upto 6th standard. Geometry boxes for 7th to 12th standard children.
4. One lunch box per child.
5. One school bag per child.
6. One activity book for fun and games for coming to terms with the effects of the Tsunami
7. Two sets of uniforms or civil clothes (esp. for college students or Balwadi children) at an average cost of Rs 250 per set for each child. Note we will initially give one uniform for the children and give the other set after we are able to cover all the children.
   
   Total Cost per Child for the above items – Rs 1000.