But the most interesting transformation was Banu’s. Banu was working in the US for a big corporation in Dallas.  He wanted to work fulltime in village development, but was unable to decide when and how.  The Tsunami finally tilted the balance. One month he was working in Dallas.  The next month he was in “downtown” Koovathur, traveling back and forth to what he calls the “twin cities of Thaidalikuppom and Panaiyur Chinnakuppom”.  Over the last few months he has been staying in Koovathur and helping mobilize local volunteer teams. He is now coordinating our long term livelihood program there.

A disaster like the Dec 26^th Tsunami brings with it destruction and death. But it also brings forth a new wave of energy and generosity for reconstruction, a new release of latent talent and a new hope in humanity. 

2. Immediate Relief Activities

AID-Chennai volunteers had begun working on relief activities in Chennai within hours of the Tsunami hitting.  As the news poured in about the damage in Cuddalore, Nagapattinam and Kanyakumari, we contacted NGOs we were working with earlier and other organizations working in those areas to organize relief activities.  Our Chennai team started mobilizing local resources, volunteers and supplies and started working on state wide coordination of relief. We informed AID volunteers in US about the status here and they began to raise funds and mobilize volunteers for the relief efforts.  By the second day we were sending out trucks of relief supplies and volunteers to different locations in Nagai, Cuddalore and Pondicherry.  Kanyakumari being much further away and MALAR being a strong network, we did not send volunteers there and instead just sent them relief trucks and supported their coordination work. In Tiruvallur, Chennai and Kanchipuram districts, AID and TNSF volunteers worked together right from first day to provide relief in all the Tsunami affected slums and in the relief camps.

The government and particularly some of the collectors did a very good job of efficiently organizing the initial relief.   But the scale of the problem was such that they were tied up in the towns and larger villages with a lot of destruction. But there were a large number of smaller villages all across the coast that were out of communication and badly hit. We decided to work in these smaller hamlets. The question was how to expand our scale of relief operation to match the scale of the problem. The key was to get large teams of volunteers to work in each of these villages and ensure they are able to plan and coordinate with each other effectively and also to ensure they are coordinating and communicating regularly with our Chennai team.

To do this effectively we quickly formed “Short-term Relief Teams” with all the groups who were able to mobilize volunteers on the field.  In Tiruvallur and Chennai, AID, TNSF and Sneham volunteers were working together. In Kanyakumari, MALAR was part of a larger group of NGOs and we simply worked with MALAR.  In Nagai and Cuddalore, where the destruction was the maximum we formed a relief team with volunteers from AID, DYFI, PSF and TNSF.  We also supported at a smaller level the work being done there by Vidyarambam and Sneha.  In Kanchipuram district, near Koovathur and Kelambakkam, where we couldn’t find many other volunteer groups working on the relief, we set up independent AID relief centers and our volunteers started working in about 25 villages spread across the coast.