These centers are being continuously used for several purposes: Government balwadis are now run in these centers in the morning. In the evening, tuition classes are conducted in the center. Older people take rest in the center in the afternoons (as it is so cool).  It is also used as a meeting place and a place to stitch nets!  During the peak summer, it was also used as a summer shelter.  In several areas, people collected local funds to paint the centers.  We also constructed a temporary center for a night school in a village near Kovalam with the left over balwadi materials. 

There is a still a lot of demand for these and similar structures (in both the villages directly and indirectly affected) and we are planning to construct (slightly modified) multi-purpose community learning centers in other villages where we are working.  These centers will be used for tuition and support classes, running libraries, toy centers and information centers in each village (and of course will also be used in the morning to run balwadis).

No to Permanent houses!

There were a large number of NGOs competing to construct permanent houses.   If we got into it, it would have meant at least Rs. 1-2 Crore per village.  A group taking this up could only work in 2-3 villages.  Our expertise was on other areas and we also wanted to work in a much larger number of villages and on issues that were neglected by other NGOs.  So we decided to keep entirely out of the permanent house construction. Looking back, I am glad we made this decision – it allowed us the time to work on a number of other programs which no one else is working on.