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Page 19 of 37 Tuition for 10th and 12th students: We have been organizing and running tuition centers for 10th and 12th students and also providing materials and training to other groups who are running similar centers. Counseling Continued: Even during this period a lot of the earlier counseling programs continued – particularly Akansha’s coloring book based materials and some of the street theatre programs for children. Sports and Fun Activities for children: In most of the villages we have started sports clubs and provided them with sports equipment – for both girls and boys. In several villages we organized sports competitions. In the prize distribution function for one big inter-village competition organized by Manohar, 960 people attended! The funds for the function and the prizes were collected locally from various local businesses. We also organized a number of outings for the children from these villages – to vandaloor zoo, crocodile park, etc. In Mahabalipuram, we organized a special 1 day program for 150 children – full of games, science experiments, magic shows, etc. Health Activities We continued organizing a large number of medical camps through this period as well. Out of the host of medical issues that we handled, two people come to mind immediately - A child from a Tsunami village in Nagai had a heart problem and was admitted in Chennai. We organized support for the child’s surgery and some volunteers kept following up on the child’s progress. The heart surgery was successful and the child survived. We also identified an old TB patient and took him to the hospital – but we were unable to save him. Apart from the medical camp related activities, we also started forming adolescent girl groups and child nutrition counseling. Adolescent Girl Groups: We started classes for adolescent girls in villages and schools. Initially our team from Chennai conducted the classes. But later we trained a few girls from the local areas themselves and they are now doing these classes systematically. We developed big and colorful flip charts to help them take the classes effectively. The impact of the class was immediate – lots of the girls surrounded our volunteers immediately after the class saying “Nobody told us all this. Please come back again. When will do the next class”, etc. There is clearly a huge need for these classes and our volunteers are planning to do these classes in at least 60 villages. We have also been training volunteers and fulltimers from other NGOs on these classes and supplying them with the materials required for taking the classes. 
Child Health and Pregnancy Care: We have also started a house to house nutrition and health counseling program in all these villages. Our local volunteers and fulltimers have been (and are being) trained on basics of nutrition, child care and pregnancy care. They go house to house providing counseling on feeding practices and disease management. We have also started this program with several other NGOs working in different areas across the coast. Back to Relief… In a few special cases we had to go back to the earlier basic relief phase. For example - In Royapuram, 1000 fisher families who had got boats could not go fishing because the fish breeding season had started there and there was a ban on fishing. We provided rice to all the families. Several temporary shelters were damaged by a cyclone that hit the coast a few months ago – we repaired and rebuilt many of the shelters. There were 600 families that had been left out of the initial relief distribution in some pockets where we were working and had no food rations – we supplied them with one month’s food rations.
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