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Achievements

Asha volunteer’s interaction with Tamil Nadu Government based on information from site visits:

Working with Government, Asha Volunteers were able to cover the short-term needs for Tsunami affected villages by communicating the people’s need and helped close the gap between the people and the government catalyzing swifter action.

 

1. Naadukuppam is one of the affected villages in Chennai district. We (Sathya and Dhanalakshmi) visited the village for the first time during the last week of February.  We had meeting with village women’s group.  They pointed out that: 

  • There are 600 families in the village.
  • There has been no government intervention. No compensation was provided because of the reason that no house was damaged. 
  • All the people expressed great livelihood problem. They expressed concern about the great difficultly of food in the days to come. Children were suffering without food. The immediate need was for food packages.

Short-term need:

  • Provision Package:  It contains 25kg Rice, 2kg dhal, 2kg oil and other provisions 

Funds needed: 

            Provision package for a family (one month) Rs.1000
            600 families x 1000                                  Rs.6, 00,000

After the visit to Naadukuppam, we had a meeting with C.V Shankar I.A.S on 28 February 2005. Sathya mentioned about Naadukuppam village and the Commissioner agreed to the fact that no support had reached the village.  The village people, mostly women approached Relief Commissioner (C.V Shankar) regarding the Government support and gave a petition. On our follow up visit to Naadukuppam on 3rd March after the meeting with Relief Commissioner we witnessed great change happening in the village.  Most of them were getting ready to go to collect the provisions and rice packages from the Government.  Government had given provisions for three months including rice to all the 600 families with Rs.1000 cash.  The village people thanked us for the effort taken.

2. After a visit to Kanyakumari, Chandravel had a discussion with the Collector for compensation of boats. Immediate action was taken on that issue.

3. January 2005, Mr. C.V. Shankar, IAS, Relief Commissioner was invited for Asha meeting regarding Tsunami work to talk about how Asha can involve in rehabilitation work of tsunami affected districts.  

Minutes of the conference call

4. Mr. Rajaram, IAS, Rural Development Officer invited Asha Honor to work on self- reliance activities along with the Government.

5. Asha had supported $10,466 for food/nutrition needs of kids in Nagapatinnam district. 1000 kids in from the elementary school and higher secondary school at Akkarapettai are being benefited.

Click here for more details:
Sheet1 - Details about breakfast provided to tsunami affected school children - Elementary & Higher Secondary School, Akkarapettai.
Sheet2 - Details about evening milk and nutritious drink provided to school children as mentioned above.
Pictures

6. Tailoring Unit in Nagapattinam:
Asha had helped support $582 for a Tailoring center in Nagapattinam. 10 tailoring machines were purchased and placed in a room next to the temporary camp office. The center is being run by 10 girls (who come from fishermen families) with basic tailoring knowledge and one teacher teaches them the different methods in stitching.

Everyday with the available cloth material, the girls are able to make 10 nos. of ladies garments and further they will move on to stitching of gents garments and stitching uniform for schools.Plans are underway to get more orders from different schools for uniforms, and NGOs to apart from establishing contact with garment manufacturing companies.