HELPING TSUNAMI SURVIVORS RECOVER AND REBUILD THEIR LIVELIHOODS IN INDIA

Current Post-Tsunami Actions. Three years after the tragedy, as relief has given way to the long and difficult process of reconstruction, it is essential to continue to support the efforts of affected and/or forgotten communities in regaining some normalcy and rebuilding their shattered lives. Our focus is on Southern India because we rely there on a network of dedicated local volunteers.

Healing surviving families and rebuilding homes and lives take time . Today, many families still need support for permanent shelter, access to potable water and electricity, health care, paid jobs. Children needs to go to school. Families must rebuild their simple livelihoods. Our current focus is to provide technical assistance for livelihoods recovery, medical care, access to school and to continue home reconstruction in tsunami affected areas.

Focusing on five coastal villages, two in Tamil Nadu near the disaster area of Cuddalore; and three in Kerala along the coast North and South of Kochi. After completing the first year relief phase, funding was sought for the reconstruction phase in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and is now promoted through two specific projects supported by the Global Giving Foundation. When People are able to work again, and orphans and children can go to school, life can become normal again except for the impact of the trauma: the suffering is imprinted in the conscience of surviving victims for ever.

Pursuing and developing the successful God-parenthood program. The God-parenthood program has entered successfully its third year of implementation. Program includes medical care to children, access to school and occasional surgical interventions to save the life of a child. A God-parent gives US$550 to support a designated child for a year

One imaginative way to make a difference, is to help boys and girls go to school by providing them with bicycles.

Bicycles for Poor Students in India Providing 300 bicycles and shoes to 300 students --150 boys and 150 girls--to help them go to school in poor coastal areas of Kerala, India. Theme: Education | Location: India | Need: $25,490

Make a donation now. If you wish to continue supporting our specific actions, you can securely make a tax deductible donation on line: click “Make a Gift Online”; or if you prefer, write a check payable to Mary Mother of Peace-MC –please indicate “India Tsunami Relief” in the memo-- and send check to Mary Mother of Peace, 8617 Irvington Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20817-3603, USA. We thank you for your kindness and being there when suffering people need you. A thank you note/receipt is sent to each benefactor. Every dollar has meaning for those in need. Corporate sponsors can also give through Global Giving. See also How to Help and Links.

Tsunami Testimonies ( By Amy Waldman, The New York Times ): “At home, the women of Tharangambadi, a small town in Southern India, had run at the sounds of screams and the sight of the water, taking hold of as many children as they could. For desperate mothers, two hands were not enough. Shanti Kumar, 35, grabbed two of her four children, and lost two.

Chinnapillai had taken her grandchildren, Kokila, 5, and Muraganna, 2, to watch the fishing boats come in. When everyone began running, the 60-year-old lady grabbed the children and began running too, not even looking behind her. When the water hit, she landed on a cottage, and the children vanished. Her daughter, Banumathi, 22, had left this village early Sunday morning to go to a temple in her home village 10 kilometers away, resisting her children's pleas to accompany her. Four days later, at the wedding hall that had been turned into a relief center, she cried and cried, flagellating herself with: "If only I had taken them with me instead of leaving them with their grandmother!”. Chinnapillai, the grandmother who survived the disaster was so consumed with guilt that she had stopped eating. Her daughter and grandchildren had come to live with her a month ago at her insistence after domestic strife had erupted in their home. "I killed the children," she said. "I forced them to come to my house."

Anandi, 14, was working with her mother in the Sunday morning fish market when the water barreled in. "Our mother could not run fast," she said. "We are young, we ran away faster." The children could see their mother, 35, struggling to keep up. They ran up into an old ice factory as water surrounded the building. They saw their mother trapped in the water, and then watched as a second wave swept her away. Fifteen-year-old Anjali found her mother's body half an hour later”.

Stories of helplessness and loss were pouring out from every corner of the devastated regions of South Asia. Thank you for giving hope to the world.

The good you do today, People will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.