Relief & Rehabilitation

Relief & Rehabilitation

REPORT OF RELIEF AND REHABILITATION WORK BY CADRE - India IN TSUNAMI AFFECTED AREAS IN KANYAKUMARI

Foreword

In Tamil Nadu the worst hit areas are Nagapattinam, Cuddalore, Kanyakumari, Chennai, Kancheepuram, Villupuram, Tuticorin and Tirunelveli (presented in the order from severely hit to slightly affected). The tsunami temporarily rearranged the coastal line causing enormous damage, in terms of lives and property to thousands of coastal community all over. Although the unprecedented scale of human death, homelessness, displaced populations, and damage is largely confined to rural areas rather than key economic and densely populated urban centers and industrial hubs, the economic impact will be felt severely at the local and community levels, dragging hundreds of thousands of already poor people into even deeper levels of poverty.

Relief and rescue: CADRE India's response

As soon as they heard of the disaster, CADRE- India volunteers rushed to Alikkal, PillaiThoppu, Malay Manakkudy, Kelay Manakkudy, Vaniyakkudy, Kottilppadu, Kurumbani, Kadiyapattanam, Muttom, Simon colony and Colachal. In the worst hit disaster condition, CADRE India tried its best to respond to the situation. It went by its core principles of grass root action and networking. And started rendering services in terms of relief material distribution, sorting of relief material, assessment, meeting and interacting with the traumatized victims and peer counseling. CADRE- India facilitated several voluntary groups to move to affected areas and render useful services.

Volunteers from Service Civil International (SCI), helped with assessing the needs of the fishermen. Student volunteers from St. Josephs HS School worked on distribution of medicines, food and other relief material. New clothes and blankets were distributed to affected fishermen families. Within the first two weeks of the relief work, CADRE - India volunteers realized the troubles of the non-fishing families, especially agricultural laborers, who although affected were not getting much relief material. Clothes were distributed to the agricultural land-less laborers in Kottilpadu and Colachal a small hamlet inhabited predominantly by Dalits.

From relief to rehabilitation

Under the Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation, CADRE India, with financial assistance from Habitat for Humanity International, has taken up house repairing of the Dalit villages of Kottilpadu, Colachel and Simon Colony in Kanyakumari District of Tamilnadu. These villages are fishing sector oriented. Their main occupation before the tsunami was fishing and making boats. With the tsunami both their livelihood and their shelters were havocked.

Colachel is a Dalit village. Here 97% of the houses were thatched houses and a few dilapidated structures also existed. With the tsunami and the cyclone the entire village was shattered. It had 3395 households. 545 of them were without any land records.

In the above mentioned two villages we have successfully completed the repair of 211 houses.

While we were carrying our repairing works in Kottilpadu and Colachel, some NGO's stopped working in the tsunami affected areas. This brought server difficulties. We requested our partner agency Habitat for Humanity to assist us. With their support, we could extend our house repairing service to the rural people of Simon Colony. Here, we successfully repaired 30 houses.

In short we were successful in providing shelter to 241 tsunami victims.

Livelihood: Skill Training

Habitat For humanity International worked in partnership with CADRE-India to train the women on masonry work and to repair 211 houses. The training constitutes both onsite and offsite. The training period was 4 months and the trainees worked in the house repairing program in the Tsunami affected areas of Kanyakumari District. CADRE-India repaired 211 houses with these trainees. Empowerment and self-sustainability of women in tsunami affected communities, in the construction field, was the main aim of this program. Ensure their economic stability, develop their self-reliance and self-confidence was another face of the training. We eradicated the stigma of women in the construction field by this training with an extent. And these trained ladies considered masonry work as a way to yield their daily bread. CADRE-India oriented 20 SHGs about the program in the Tsunami affected communities in Kanyakumary District. More than 300 members attended the program. 50 ladies expressed their interest to undergo the training. Technical and practical orientation took place for these 50 trainees during 20 days. Onsite training was given during four months in the Tsunami Repair and Renovation program. And we formed three SHGs with these ladies. Now through these SHGs they are finding their own job. Besides, we have given follow ups to these trainees in our own constructions and other building related activities which are conducted by the other NGOs.

Rehabilitation of visually impaired people

CADRE-India offers rehabilitation to visually impaired members of the community who:
- Are blind by birth but didn't get rehabilitation during their childhood.
- Became blind during their lives as a result of eye diseases.
The main problems faced by these people are:
- Social exclusion: due to the lack of mobility knowledge, they are not able to leave their homes and feel guilty and ashamed for being a burden to their families.
- Economic dependence: they have never developed professional skills and therefore they are not able to have any income.
- Psychological problems: lack of self-confidence, extreme shyness

CADRE-India's intervention:

CADRE-India is conducting eye camps in the Kanyakumari District, to give awareness on eye diseases and to make regular vision checkups to the community. The NGO also gives counseling to cataract affected people and their families and accompany them during their cataract operation processes. CADRE-India believes that through prevention most of the cases of blindness in adults can be avoided.

CADRE-India is also identifying visually impaired people and teaching them mobility and working skills. Through this, we are successfully avoiding social and economic exclusion and building up self-confidence. When our beneficiaries learn mobility, they are more confident to help their families in the household activities and also to leave the house and meet other members of their communities. The main working skills taught are palm leaf handicrafts and the results of their production are being commercialized through the organization. CADRE-India also helps visually impaired people to open their own business.

With the help of our charity box we are also able to provided financial help to those visually impaired beneficiaries, who are in situations of extreme need.

Rehabilitation for multisensory impaired children:

CADRE-India is giving rehabilitation to Multisensory Impaired Children (MSI) in their homes. The NGO identifies these children through stakeholders in the community and gives counseling to their families and rehabilitation to the children. Our team of professional teachers go to the children's house and create a specific program with specific goals depending on the child's needs and abilities. We encourage the families to train their child everyday following the exercises taught by the teachers. The program is being a big success and the children are making very big improvements.