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	Navjeevan Organisation Tsunami Rehabilitation Center

 

Think of the December 26th 2004, you will have an image of devastated humanity all along our Eastern Coasts. The Tsunami wrecked the people. Their houses, livelihoods and of more importance their dreams were shattered by a simple action of nature. The catastrophe came with a number of lessons for the governments and the nodal development agencies.

A simple example of nature’s fury resulted into 2.5-lakh people dead, innumerable number of people losing their homes and livelihood. The huge water wall gripped the coastal regions of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala in India. In the district of Nellore, Andhra Pradesh more then 20 people were killed and the livelihoods of people from 100 villages of 11 mandals were mauled

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The response from the civil societies all across the globe was also overwhelming. Just because the death numbers were not so huge, the district could not get enough attention from the agencies involved in relief and rehabilitation programmes. One of our fellows, K. Sahdeviah of Navjeevan Organisation instantly made an assessment of the losses. The two organisations decided to supplement the government efforts and also identify those areas that could not find place in the rehabilitation maps of other government and non-governmental agencies. Another policy finalised was that the whole intervention would be in coordination with the Andhra Pradesh Government’s Velugu/DRDA Department. We decided to work with women groups of the area. Around 40 Mahila Mandals were formed among the Yennadi communities and 20 such groups among fishermen communities. These Mandals were developed as the nodal agencies for all our interventions. The focus was on restoration of means of livelihood viz. nets, catamarans, Fibre boats and out board motors. SRUTI and Navjeevan Organisation facilitation the purchase and distribution of nets, cattammarans and fibre boats. This assistance was in the nature of revolving grants to the savings groups. The beneficiaries had to return the amount to the Mahila Mandals to create a revolving corpus. It was intended to reduce the dependency on Asamis (the Money lenders) for all their financial requirements and create an emergency fund for the future.

Special focus has been on the Yennadi Adivasi communities who were not part of the government rehabilitation efforts. Therefore we decided to address it by reaching to these marginalised communities.

During SRUTI – Navjeevan Organisation initiative, we reached more than 733 affected Yenadi famililies from 19 villages. Other set of 1300 fishermen families were also a part of our intervention. Our work was spread over 5 blocks of Dist Nellore, Andhra Pradesh. Our intervention started in January 2005. The whole action involved the women groups of the area for implementation of the programmes. The intervention succeeded in mobilising financial supports for boats and nets for the effected fishing families.

In our endeavour we received warm responses from the local people, individual and institutional donors and people from all walk of life. We appreciate the overwhelming all the individual and organizational support. A generous collective monetary support of rupees 1.6 crores has enabled the organisations in helping the people in restoring their livelihood.