Reached Chennai in the afternoon after a longish but pleasant drive.
Met up Kiruba, Nanda, Suman, Chitra. After some discussion, we headed out to the AID India office and met Anu who is coordinating with volunteers.
She gave us some useful info about the villages to head to and also supplies we can take with us. From there we headed to enquire about fishing nets. And then bought some sports supplies that Anu suggested that we can take for kids in the affected villages.
We’re heading out now for Chidambaram, about 3 hours away, a central point from where we will head for about 3-4 villages, early morning.
Volunteer work is still going on full swing, so if you’re thinking of doing something, a good point to start with would be to contact AID India in Chennai. They will be able to guide you on possible activities. They also need help with building temporary housing in the coming days.
Will be back tomorrow night or on Sunday.
Hi !
First…I must say I like the flavor and content on your blog. A lot of good work.
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Sharath
Wish you had called. I’ve gone to AID-India by myself recently and it would be better with old friends.
Whooooops! I wish I’d visited your earlier blog post…I’d have joined you guys! 🙁
I have posted an article at http://www.ramdhanyk.com/movabletype/archives/thoughtprocess/001351.html about the real situation of fishermen. I hope that post helps you understand their real needs and help them out in getting a better future. Keep up the good work.
I am a chennaite, I’d like to know the address/telephone of AID-india. Kindly mail me at vikraman@gmail.com
Keep up the good work guys. It feels really good to see lot of people coming together for a good cause.
hey thats great..i appreciate what you are doing..
thanks sharath. glad you liked it.
yb: oh dear. i had actually asked kiruba to coordinate the chennai bloggers since we had very little time. in fact, we finally had to leave out 1-2 people because we had only 2 cars, instead of the initially planned 3.
ravi: wish you’d seen it earler. a few of the chennai bloggers dropped out, so we would definitely have had room for a few more people. and one more car 🙂
ramdhan: will have a read. also talking to them first hand and interacting with them was also quite an eye opener. though we didn’t understand tamil, the others who did kept explaining what they were saying.
vikraman: please check aidindia.org. i think the area was t-nagar. from there we just asked around.
thanks samuel. it was the very least we could do.
thanks divya.
i went there today. hope to meet some of you in nagapattinam.
Hu ewlikf!
I am a seventeen year old American girl of Indian descent. My sister(16) and I want to volunteer while we are staying with our relatives in Chennai. Do you know of any programs that permits volunteers ages 16+? Would any programs that specify 18+ allow kids that are our age?
I will be 18 in October, even though that will be after summer.
Nice post. Thanks for sharing.