The courage to convert your intentions into actions makes you real.
Devastating floods hit a state in South India in 2009. There was a huge loss of life and property and the call for donations by the Government to help the victims filled the airwaves on TV and radio. I was glued to the TV for a couple of days hoping to hear news of improvement in the situation but somehow sitting there not doing anything just didn’t feel right.
One of the places that was affected was a town called Kurnool which was about 5 hours by road from where I lived. At 20 years of age, I didn’t give a lot of thought to the pros and cons of my urge to go there and help. I contacted the UNICEF who had their field agents in the affected areas for data and the next day at Google where I was working then, I gathered 3 like-minded people and against my parents’ requests not to, we headed to Kurnool for a reccee. The gory sights of death and devastation that met our eyes that day are things that will never leave my memory. Having talked to the rescued victims and having seen the effect of the natural disaster first hand, it only strengthened our will to do something to help the situation. We went back to our city and brainstormed on what we could do.
Based on our observations, we decided we didn’t want to do things that would bring in relief for just a day or two. We wanted to help the affected people to get back to normalcy. For this, we decided we’ll work with the fisher people community and rehabilitate them. After making a couple more trips and understanding their not-so-obvious-problems, we categorised our action items and worked on them. Our action items were:
- Bring back their livelihood means to them.
For this, we collected donations among friends and families back in our city and bought boats, fishing nets and other tools for fishing to get them started given all their belongings were washed away or broken into pieces in the floods. - Keep the children occupied in a safe place so the parents could give their 100% in re-constructing their houses which didn’t exist anymore.
For this, we kept the children busy in a small camped area with fun and learning and making sure they had meals at the right times.
These two action-items were diligently followed and done and within a few weeks this fisher community of 60 families had their houses rebuilt and were back at sea, their only known way of livelihood.
Back then, I was too young to reflect or dissect what we did and seek learnings from the experience. My most important thing was that I wasn’t being a passive spectator hoping for something to happen but jumped into the field to take charge of things and do my bit. Looking back at it now, I realise why the UN field agents had such quizzical looks on their faces when I landed outside their door to collect real-time data and advice. Maybe it was quite a courageous thing to walk into carcasses, dead bodies, filth, diseases and offer support and stand by people who just lost a huge part of their lives. I liked how we quickly took in observations from our visit and how these insights helped in forming an action plan. A plan which helped us concentrate our efforts in a small area and sustain the initiative with a focused and suitable approach by not biting off more than we could chew.
The best part was that our efforts of raising funds for the fishermen community helped us find a person, who encouraged by our work, decided to adopt an entire village and help with its rehabilitation.
Here’s a BBC news report covering the floods:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8292606.stm