Dream India - Updates on Projects Planned post Chennai Floods

Dear Friends,

We are closely monitoring the relief/rehab work being carried by Government and other NGOs in Chennai. We are also in the process of discussing our next steps towards the same.

Currently most of us (the NGOs) are involved in the assessment phase of rehab. Dream India's strength has always been our connect to education system. 

We work closely with children of corporation and government schools and been doing that for close to about 10 years now.

Action2020 team has expressed complete support for all the projects listed below. All these projects will be executed as Action2020 projects.

We would like to thank singer, song-writer Mr. Amith Sivashanmugam for helping Dream India by donating the revenue from his Album #SongForChennai.

We are currently thinking on following projects to be carried out,

Project 1 - A

Scholarships for students from Chennai. We plan to provide scholarship for students who complete their higher secondary this year from Chennai.

Criteria and the number of students to be provided are being discussed. 

Project 1 - B

Scholarships for students from Cuddalore. We plan to provide scholarship for students who complete their higher secondary this year from Cuddalore.

Criteria and the number of students to be provided are being discussed. 

Project 2

We are planning to conduct "Disaster Management" sessions for corporation and government school children. We will be starting with Chennai.

The sessions will be designed to enlighten the children and will be informative as well fun to learn.

We plan to have a small booklet printed on the same and distributed.

We are working with professionals and officials on this. 

Project 3

Dream India will conduct sessions on "Disaster Management", "Health", "First Aid" and various other important topics every quarter. 

Participants will have to pay a fee and attend these sessions. Target audience are students and professionals from various other industries who are not aware of the topics.

DI trustees, Friends and Well wishers are providing inputs and we will get back with clear updates on all of these at the earliest.

We thank you all for the confidence in Dream India. We will ensure that each of your contribution is used for the needy as we ever do.

Thank you.

DI Trustees

DI and Future India Trust - Flood Relief

Dear Friends,

We received 100 blankets from Future India Trust, one of our partners in Action2020. Thanks to Ravi and Shiva. Special thanks to Guna sir for sending it from Karur.

We are planning to distribute them to the areas identified by us already.

Regards,
Natarajan Raman

Appeal for DI Relief Work - Exercise Caution - Dec 5th 2015

My dear fellow brothers and sisters who are currently away from Chennai and who feel guilty and bad for not being able to be on ground. Please take this assurance from me. City is getting better and most of the places are accessible. Lack of mobile network connectivity does not mean people are in soup. Volunteers are on ground ensuring people get basic needs addressed. So please do not worry and more importantly DO NOT feel guilty and donate to some XYZ.

At many places, People have reached a stage where they throw food as it is in excess and clothes are being dumped in rooms. Of course there are places where there is need, but that would become balanced only when the problem of same place getting dumped with more stops. Everyone is cooking food and do not know where to give. People in camps have started asking for choice of food, biscuits or anything that they see from what is being taken there. If anyone or any NGO asks for donation, please speak to them.

Understand what is that they do, what is going on and then donate. It's not the same emergency situation as it was three days ago where you had to give without questioning. Person taking money now should be able to explain their plans clearly on what they need to do. If the person taking your money is not someone whom you cannot reach out by a call or email or text, then it's time to stop giving. It's accountability stuff on both sides. Your job does not end by donating and their job does not end by just taking it. Take time, find out right people on ground, it could be your own friends group or a neighbor next to you. Do things through them than doing it just because someone is popular.

Thanks for being there for people always. #chennairains #chennaifloodsrelief #chennairelieffund

TN Flood Relief - Cuddalore relief work

Date 7th December time 7:00 PM Dear all, my friend Mr. Shiva +919787971708 is at kurinjipaadi village in cuddalore district. They are visiting interior parts of village and finding the needs of people. As per the research, people are having challenge in getting food. Main reason being lack of utensils and material for cooking. 

People claim interior parts are ignored and seems to be true. If you or any of the teams are looking for a right resource to ensure right people get the material, please talk to him. He is an engineer from Pondicherry and his team is completely out on visits to help people. Let us do our bit for cuddalore as well. 

Dream India ONLY did co-ordination work here by linking our friends to the right resource.

Regards Natarajan , co-convenor Action2020, 
Dream India www.dreamindia.org 9940677570

DI and Vasantham Flood relief work

Lakshmi Radhakrishnan madam - Thanks to you and your daughter Ms. Sumitha for the timely support. Vasantham Special School thanks a lot for taking time and ensuring the material is used in the right way. Prime Point Srinivasan Raja Rajan Krupa Murugesan

Verified by me personally. #grim

amazed to see the efforts. The candles are handmade by the children who are mentally challenged. From East mogappair.. They have a van to distribute candles for the needy. The contact details are in the pic

DI Flood Relief work - Dec 6, 2015

December 6, 2015 : We had planned to wait and watch the situation as it was getting back to near normal. Thanks to information and help from Dhanapal sir - Raja Raja Rajansir, his friend Varun and myself we collected the relief material drinking water, candles, matches and a few towels from Dr. Kalam vision movement. It was wonderful to note that we had group of youngsters from various parts of TN volunteer at Kalam sir office.

It was raining heavily from morning and did not seem to relent.

We headed towards JITO to collect blankets as one of our friends had received message about the same. We found that there was huge demand and they would require a day to process. We visited nearby co-optex, unfortunately it was out of stock on bedsheets we were looking for.

We then got a message from Krishnavillasam about 300 food packets being available. We collected 250 of them and delivered it to Loyola relief center as per the call we received from a volunteer.

We found that there was some shortage on food supply today at a few places. From there we proceeded to eri scheme mogappair and distributed biscuits, bun, candles, water packets and other items to all residents who were affected by flood. On the way, near the new bridge that connects the PH road to mogappair, we found around close to 500 people waiting.. On inquiry we found that they were waiting for people to come and distribute relief items. Many had come and left midway as handling the crowd was difficult.

We could sense that situation has improved and now people want expectations to be met rather than their need.

We also had few items like water packets, sanitary napkins and a few more items for distribution at vaangaram.

Thanks a lot again to Dream India, APJ Kalam vision movement, Patterns, Vasantham Special School, Action2020, MREC Tamil alumini friends, TCS sagas friends and many other friends for the support.

DI Relief Work - Day 3 - Dec 5, 2015

December 5 2015 visit : Raja sir, my wife Krupa and myself we visited Porur madanandapuram as there was no communication from this place yet. We found that water logging was there at many places, but all the residents are fine and also that they have access to shops and so. We also visited max worth colony and found things to be okay.

Post this we headed towards velachery. On the way we stopped at a relief camp near court Saidapet. We distributed clothes, biscuits and a few more items. It was very very difficult to manage the crowd. We had to rush from there. We found a truck and car being pounded..volunteers on the vehicles had no clue what to do. Absolutely difficult to deal here.

Near the Junction, we had Priya and Srivatasan join us with biscuits, bread and more importantly water packets. We went to baby nagar, tansi nagar, ram nagar and also perungudi railway station. We distributed mosquito coils, Milk packets, bread, bun, biscuits and a few more items to all. One Mr. Ganesh from TCS joined us and helped us to venture through the area. We saw that many groups are attending to them especially about providing food thrice a day. Here again maintaining the order was a challenge. We found that it's easier to deal with flooded areas than camps.

For people who are not being able to connect with relatives at this place,  it's the network that is the issue. And moving across the water logging is a challenge so many are at home. I would say all are safe and are being taken care here.

Then we moved towards royapuram, wimco and reached chetti school. We were welcomed (@*!?l)by local political group. They asked where are you from and what you want to give. The way they answered itself made us feel we made a mistake coming here. They were sarcastically telling us that if you can give for all 600 give else you can't give. We just dropped the clothes and left this place.

We also found lot of support being provided at a relief camp in tvk school Anna nagar.

We also used dettol and bleaching powder to sanitize a few water logged areas.

Overall,  the rain was less severe today and many of the places are recovering. It will take time to get the complete mess cleared but be assured that people are being attended to.

We plan to wait and watch the situation on ground. Lot of big organizations and administration (now that water is drained at most places) are in to play now. We would like to resume our work on need basis and focus on them again once the focus shifts from them.

We would like to thank Dream India friends, Patterns, Vasantham Special School, MREC Tamil alumini, tcs sagas friends, Action2020 team,  Tamil Nadu flood support FB page and many of our friends for the support and helping us along the way.

We believe (if no rains further)  city should be back to work by Monday and areas out of network to be restored in a few days. Hope rain God thinks the same.

Regards,

Natarajan