Apart from this we had a large number of ordinary people who came to our office with money to directly buy and supply materials. They had collected funds from their friends and colleagues and wanted to buy and supply the materials directly. Some of these people would come every day collect the list of requirements, make the purchases and supply the needs by the evening when the trucks were ready to leave.  We salute these large numbers of selfless volunteers and donors. A group of volunteers mobilized by one of our volunteers Mr. Ramamoorthy, came from Gujarat with 2 truck loads of materials and distributed these in a few villages in Koovathur area.  Bhoomika, Pratham, and Ila’s Kitchens, and Smarthanam Trust also supplied us with a large amount of materials. CSC Hyderabad sent us a large number of volunteers and Chlorine tablets.  Many different groups sent us medicines for our health camps, notebooks and books for children, school uniforms, slates, pencils, etc.  Together all of these relief supplies are estimated at Rs.70 Lakhs.

Counting all of these together we have totally collected and distributed relief supplies worth more than Rs. 275 Lakhs! And this is a conservative estimate and does not include medicines which were another about Rs.30-40 Lakhs at least. These relief materials were distributed to about 90,000 people spread over 97 affected villages across the coast.

When I mentioned this to Lokesh (one of our young fulltimers), he said laughingly “Ah! Now I know why our backs were broken lifting the relief materials and loading the trucks!”

We had sent about 80 trucks of relief materials to Nagai and Cuddalore and another 25 trucks to Koovathur, Kelambakkam, Tiruvallur and Kanyakumari. Apart from this lots of distribution work happened in Chennai as well.  In addition a large number of trucks were sent directly from Bangalore. In all more than 130 trucks full of relief materials were distributed.  Each truck carried at least Rs. 1-2 Lakhs (often more) worth of materials.

To sort and stock the materials till they were sent, we needed a large amount of godown and storage space. Many people came forward and offered us space in their houses and several people organized proper godowns for us to store and sort these materials.  We got volunteers from a large number of companies helping with the ‘supply-chain management’ of these godowns.

There were of course many individuals and organizations who donated generously to AID-India through AID-USA.  Apart from this, a large number of individuals donated directly to AID-India for both our immediate relief and the long term rehabilitation work.  Many people also collected funds from their friends and colleagues.  Collection drives were undertaken within a large number of companies. Many people from Swiss Re, TI, Infosys, Tesco, Oracle, Standard Chartered, ICICI, Ernst and Young, Citibank, Hexaware, Shlumberger, TCS, Futuresoft, Ventech Solutions, Collabnet, Lufthansa, Marketing Tech, Aventail, Sun Microsystems, Siemens, Bharti-Airtel, Quest, Bluestar Infotech, CISED, SAP Labs, Netscalers, Impulsesoft, S3IDF, TI, Lucent, FCI Tech, Adaptec, Satyam, Ujjwal Management, i2, SCT software, Maharastra Foundation, GGG, IIT-Madras, IMSC, JNCASR and several Indian Associations in the US and in Australia donated towards both the immediate relief and long term rehabilitation efforts.  It was due to their support that we were able to do so many different relief and rehabilitation activities.