Proposal

The Tsunami disaster caused by the earthquake on Dec 26th this year, has been reported to have taken a toll of 60,000 lives. Among these, it is estimated that India alone has lost more than 10,000 of its people to these killer winds. The death tolls are steadily increasing in India, and the actual numbers of lost lives cannot be obtained, since some parts of the affected regions are inaccessible. It is feared that the toll in India alone may reach 20,000. Several thousands are missing. More than 1.5 million Indians have been displaced by this disaster. This is the biggest natural calamity that has faced independent India. The devastation is comparable to that of a nuclear holocaust with several thousand atomic bombs and the United Nations has called the damage "unprecedented".
The affected regions in India are the coastal states of Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and the Andaman and Nicobar islands. Although it is too early to assess the acutal damages of this disaster, the infrastructure losses themselves amount to Rs 20 billion in these states. The amount of money required to provide relief and rehabilitation to the affected areas is estimated at $ 500 million. Moreover, there are fatal threats to life in these affected areas, since people are now living in conditions of debris, impure drinking water and poor sanitation conditions, that can cause diseases and epidemics. Medical aid and hospital facilities are estimated to cost more than $ 200 million in these states. India, a developing nation, has to contend with this major setback to its progress, whose damages can cost billions of dollars.
The Indian government is providing relief in the form of medical and food supplies, relief camps and hospitals for the victims of the disaster. The debris clearance and the identification and detection of dead bodies is also being taken care of. Communication efforts with the inaccesible Nicobar islands and relief measures for these regions is also being organized. The government has also promised a remuneration of Rs 1,00,000 for the bereaved families and has promised to build pukka houses for the fishermen whose huts were washed away into the sea.
Although the Indian government is mobilizing all efforts and resources into the relief and rehabilitation for the tragedy, the magnitude of the episode is too large for any single government to effectively counter. As a complement to the Indian government's efforts, Association for India's Development (AID), a non-profit, charity-based, social organization would like to extend its services and volunteers. AID was found in 1991, and has been supporting and initiating efforts in various areas of development such as education, livelihoods, natural resources, health, women's empowerment and social justice in India.AID, Inc. is registered with the US Federal Government as a non-profit charitable corporation under the category 501(C)(3). Its federal Tax-ID is 04-3652609.
AID has about 500 dedicated volunteers working in 36 chapters in the US and 4 chapters in India. It has supported 365 developmental projects so far and has over a 100 ongoing projects in 18 states of India. For more details, please visit :
http://www.aidindia.org/index.php
Gujarat numbers
The Chennai chapter of AID is in Tamilnadu, the most devastated Indian state in this disaster. Our volunteers in this branch have swung into action and are trying to collect resources and organize efforts towards disaster management. They have formed a working coalition with some other local social organizations like TNSF, Pondicherry Science Forum, DYFI, Vidyarambam etc.
They are currently directing the relief efforts towards the five most affected areas in the state of Tamilnadu- Chennai, Cuddalore, Pondicherry, Nagapattinam and Kanyakumari. Since the need of teh hour is to provide immediate relief to the disaster victims, they have organized themselves informally into three task groups:
-Collection and Information Group: This group receives donations in cash and kind, issues receipts, maintains transaction records, provides updates to the AID-US chapters and computes budgetary requirements of the project on a daily basis.
-Resource Allocation and Disbursement Group: This group gets the requirements from the field volunteers, allocates the available resources to the target areas and disburses the collected donations to these areas.
-Field Group: This group involves the grassroots volunteers, who are present at the sites of destruction. They recieve the relief materials and distribute them, and offer their services at the sites. They are also involved in talking to victims and recording the requirements on an hourly basis.
The AID volunteers are carrying trucks full of relief materials and travelling to the target locations, where a relief coordination effort has been planned with the local social organizations. The volunteers plan to stay there for a week to 10 days, and assess and plan the long term rehabilitation efforts after the initial relief is dealt with.
The objectives of the AID Tsunami mission are :
1. To complement the efforts of the Indian government, and provide relief in Nagapattinam, Cuddalore and Kanyakumari districts of Tamilnadu. The relief operations in these regions are not adequate and effective.
2. To identify under assisted areas and provide blankets, clothes and other relief materials in these areas, over and above the basics provided by the government.
3. To provide manpower and services in the form of field workers, volunteers etc.
4. To organize other social organizations and provide a co-ordinated, consolidated effort to complement the government's relief efforts, as opposed to fragmented, disorganized attempts.

In order to accomplish the objectives of the AID Tsunami mission, we propose to attack the problem by a three-pronged approach:

1. Immediate relief measures: Provision of food, clothing, blankets, medicines, temporary shelter and health camps for medical epidemics and emergencies.
2. Medium term rehabilitation and relief measures: Constuction of pukka huts or houses for the displaced victims, sustained medical aid and hospital facilities for the handicapped or injured
3. Long term infrastructural measures: Alternate livelihood for the dead fishermen's families, provision of livelihood support mechanisms like boats, fishing nets, life jackets etc for those who have suffered a loss of property, building hospitals and schools that have been razed due to the Tsunami disaster.

The budget estimates of the immediate relief alone are at $

The Tsunami calamity has brought about devastation and death of a staggering scale. It is probably one of the worst natural disasters in recent times. In India, the poorest people have been affected. People who do not have savings or insurance. People who are now left without families, homes or a livelihood. It will be very long before these people can recover from this tragedy, if at all, in this lifetime.

The realization of the above approach requires financial aid and generous donations from organizations and individuals all over the world. The UN has called for one of the world's largest relief efforts, spanning all countries and organizations toward a unified corpus devoted to assisting the Tsunami victims. As an important organization with many international employees, some of whom are from the affected countries, we request you to contribute toward this cause. Let us focus all our efforts and try to rebuild the world together.