Dec 15, 2015
Open Your Heart
Stop thinking - Get down and help. That’s what the recent devastating floods of Chennai taught me!
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Open Your Heart
Stop thinking - Get down and help. That’s what the recent devastating floods of Chennai taught me!
Dec 9th - update in photos
These are photos from our collection centre at Sholinganallur
Updated FAQs
My friends and I are working to provide assistance to the people affected by the floods in Tsunami Colony, Semmencheri (off the OMR in Chennai).
Why are you working in this colony?The colony was badly affected by the floods with ground floor apartments inundated. While most of the waters have receded, there are dangers of disease and a number of people who require the basics to help them return to normalcy.
But I read online that this colony has received a lot of relief materials?There is a lot of chatter on social media about how this colony is receiving a lot of relief aid and food. In reality, this assistance is focused primarily around the blocks near the entrance of the colony. The blocks stuck in the interiors are much worse off without any of the assistance reaching them. For instance, as on 8/12 at 9pm, electricity had been restored in the blocks at the front. However, the blocks in the interior remained pitch dark. Water pumping is being carried out, but again, this is moving from the blocks in the front towards the inside.
How are you able to help in these inside parts of the colony?We have set up a relief staging area in a school in Shollinganallur (Ramana Vidyalaya) where we are consolidating, sorting and packing materials. A number of children in the school are from this neighbourhood and so we have direct knowledge of families in different blocks. These parents are assisting in coordination. The delivery of the relief is being carried out via the same school buses that go into the neighbourhood daily for the students. The school bus drives through the streets and our team goes door to door on each street delivering the packets rather than have people converge on a single location. We are focusing our efforts on a specific part of the colony (8th, 9th and 10th cross streets) where there are 1000 households.
What kind of relief are you providing?We distributed over 1500 packets of food in the neighbourhood on 7th Dec and 850 packets on 8th Dec. We plan to target delivery of food for a 1000 people each day till the end of this week (13th Dec). Additionally, we also distributed baby formula (Cerelac) to mothers with infants and plan to provide milk powder to families with children from 9/12 onwards. However, the looming need at the moment, is to make sure that other necessities beyond food / water are made available to them to speed up the return to normalcy. We are putting together relief kits with a variety of materials identified after discussions with the colony residents and some healthcare specialists. We are targetting 1000 kits in total for distribution, 1 kit per family in the streets we are working in. To put together these kits, we require the following items 1. Soap (100gm bars) - 2000 nos. 2. Bleaching powder (250gm packets) - 1000 nos3. Mosquito Coils (box) - 1000 nos 4. Matchboxes (box of 50 sticks) - 2000 nos 5. Candles - 5000 nos6. Towels - 2000 nos7. Bedsheets - 2000 nos8. Plastic sleeping mats (paais) - 2000 nos9. Toothbrush - 2000 nos10 Toothpaste - 1000 nos 11. Coconut oil (100ml bottles) - 1000 nos 12. Milk powder (400gm boxes) - 1000 nos 13. Children's clothes - 2000 sets14. Plastic bags to carry all of the above - 1000 nos We are actively sourcing these quantities of materials from various places (some donated, some on payment). We are coordinating with some corporate teams in Chennai as well as volunteer groups in Bangalore for some of these materials. However, we have a long way to go before we have enough to assist a 1000 households.
How can I help?There are multiple ways you can assist. 1. Help identify credible and confirmed sources of any of these materials listed above (as donations or even on a payment basis). Transportation of these materials to the staging area would be a huge plus. Our current availability of vehicles for this is limited and cannot cover too many trips in a day. The delivery location is Ramana Vidyalaya School, 371 M.G.R., First Cross St, Sholinganallur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600119Google Maps Link - https://goo.gl/maps/wo1SvujSgVQ2 2. Provide financial assistance. There are a number of ways you can send money across to us whether you are in India or outside. i) If you are in the USA, you can transfer to any of the following• www.paypal.me/va5un or send money on PayPal to [email protected] • Venmo: @va5un • Google Wallet / Gmail / Bank of America /Chase Quickpay (US): [email protected] ii) If you are in India Account name : N S Educational Trust ICICI Bank A/C number 035001005254 IFSC CODE ICIC0000519 Sholinganallur Branch These donations are eligible for Tax deduction under Section 80(G) of the Income Tax Act. iii) If you are elsewhere, PayPal to the US account has proven to be the most successful option Where can I see what work you are doing?We are documenting our work at http://semmencherirelief.tumblr.com. Please visit for pictures and videos (coming soon). Our contact details are available here http://semmencherirelief.tumblr.com/post/134779032820/who-we-are Thank you Team Semmencheri Relief
Location of where the relief materials are going
7th December - Semmencheri Colony Distribution #1
8th December
Sorting some donations made at home by residents of our area
Who we are
soumya nair +91 99 71 943642
Gokul Chandrasekaran - 98407 93929
Kaviraj - 94452 15502
Nirmal Rajagopalan - 87545 47449
Siddhesh Mukundan - 90032 22170
Sunetra Mukundan
Varun Viswanath 91082 89237
Vinay Ramanath 96771 94111
Things we need
The need at the moment is to make sure that the necessities are available to them. We are putting together kits and are targetting 1000 kits in total. To assemble these, we require the following items
1. Soap (100gm bars) - 2000 nos. 2. Bleaching powder (250gm packets) - 1000 nos 3. Mosquito Coils (box) - 1000 nos 4. Matchboxes (box of 50 sticks) - 2000 nos 5. Candles - 5000 nos 6. Towels - 2000 nos 7. Bedsheets - 2000 nos 8. Plastic sleeping mats (paais) - 2000 nos 9. Toothbrush - 2000 nos 10 Toothpaste - 1000 nos 11. Coconut oil (100ml bottles) - 1000 nos (to apply to skin before wading through water) 12. Milk powder (400gm boxes) - 1000 nos 13. Children's clothes - 2000 sets 14. Plastic bags to carry all of the above - 1000 nos