In one village we just completed constructing a model children’s activity center. Vennila, an architect who has been guiding all our construction activities, designed a very interesting, simple and low cost structure for the children’s activity center with a lot of ventilation. This center has just been completed and we are starting children’s day care and toy center and pre-primary education centers in this temporary structure. We will also use the structure for support centers and tuition centers in the evening and also for coordinating our children and women’s health work.

This low cost structure has amazed a lot of people in the nearby villages – they have come from other villages to look at this structure and have made a request for similar structures in their villages. Basically the structure uses the existing breeze flow to take away the heat and so underneath it is really cool. We have started constructing these semi-permanent children’s activity centers in the several other villages as well.

Of course in many villages regular relief distribution work is also being continued along with the large number of tuition centers, child and women’s health programmes, sports activities and counseling sessions. In a painting session, one child drew a huge wave as tall as the light house washing away both her parents as she stood wailing. Activities and games with children like these who have many such fears has been a constant activity. The cultural and jatha teams are playing a good role in this – slowly infusing a sense of hope amidst all this despair. These cultural activities are giving people a sense of confidence as they are able to participate in happily it without the sense of being “dependents” or “receivers”. A video for children on understanding the Tsunami is now complete. In the earlier phase a number of dalit villages had not received sufficient relief supplies from most people supplying relief materials – being generally more marginalized. We have started working with dalit organizations and networks to cover this gap.

Apart from all this work, these three weeks also saw a lot of concrete long term planning activities. We did a lot of re-organizing of our fulltime and part time teams. In the middle of all this hectic activity we also evolved a detailed long term plan – where we can make a significant difference in these areas over the next several years. We also started working out with other organizations like Vidyarambam, Pratham, Nesa, Social Welfare Center, the Organic Farmers Association on what their long term plans were and how we can help in that. We now have a detailed overall plan of action on a number of areas.

Slowly as the week and the month began to end, a clear picture of what we must do over the next several years has emerged. Some ideas – like what to do in cases where the sea has entered agricultural lands and made it saline or what alternate enterprises can be started – are still being developed. Some ideas – particularly in education and health – have become a lot more concrete. In the rest of this report we will look at what future lies ahead.

What Future Lies Ahead? Our Long Term Plans…

A month has passed by. From front page news every day, relief and rehab news items have been shifted to the third page! Slowly the huge public interest in the Rehab efforts is coming down, though there are still a large number of committed individuals and organizations working tirelessly on the relief efforts.