Relief and rehabilitation of this scale is first of its kind in Tamil Nadu. Though AID has experience in coordinating relief work in Orissa during the super-cyclone and coordinating with other NGO’s during the Gujarat earthquake, taking up relief and rehabilitation in massive scales has been the first time experience.

During normal parlance of rehabilitation, in each village there will be a lot of affected families and keeping in view of their needs and requirements, plans are made. But in this region Tsunami has brought all to the same platform and the gap between the haves and have-nots have been narrowed down. With stronghold of the panchayats in the traditional mould, infiltrating into the community to assess their losses and requirements needed lot of persuasion and perseverance.

Strangely enough, getting a dent into the women’s world in the fishing panchayats has been very tough as they are totally under the grips of their panchayats and do not have any individual say in any of the affairs or decisions concerning their village.

Though relief was very much the need of the hour, the over-pouring relief added with materialistic relief has, in a way, hampered the process of bringing back the community to stand on their own feet.

Information provided on the losses was also not realistic and there was a tendency to boost the figures in the hope that more in the community could benefit. Thus in most of the places to arrive at the actual losses was very difficult task.

In this scenario, AID decided to engage the local human resources as volunteers for collection of ground level information and further to associate in the relief and rehabilitation operations in the region. Each volunteer himself/herself has lost one or more members of his/her family members or relatives in the Tsunami onslaught.

A psychological boost was given to them as deemed fit depending on the degree of their mental disposition and they were absorbed into AID. These volunteers were highly motivated and they were trained well in meeting with any exigency. In fact, it is these people who were the witnesses to the gruesome Tsunami.

Two project offices in Parangipettai in Cuddalore District and Nagapattinam district were established.