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A Visit to the Vembar Region of Tamil Nadu.
The
train rolled into the station at daybreak, we arrived at the quiet and
foggy town of Kovilpatti, near Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu. At the station, we
were greeted by Mr. Kumaravelu of the Rejuvenate India Movement (RIM), who
ushered us into a waiting jeep. It was going to be nearly an hour’s
ride to Vilathikulam, the city that housed the offices of the NGO’s
VEMBU and VIDIYEL Trust. We were completing a site visit of these two
NGO’s. They  had submitted project
applications for long term rehabilitation work in areas that were
secondarily affected by the Dec 2004 South East Asian Tsunami.
A
brief note on these organizations: The VEMBU organization is run by the
Salesian society of Don Bosco and is working in the area to empower
underprivileged children and youth, while the VIDIYEL Trust supports child
labor elimination projects in the area, along with conducting women’s
empowerment programs. We began our day meeting with the directors of
both these organizations to discuss the projects being proposed by them,
and also to understand the socio-economic problems of the region.
Vembar,
the site of the projects we were visiting, was still a couple of hours
drive away. A shattered pothole filled road, if it could be termed one, was
what lay in between. The surrounding landscape reflected the total lack of
development in the area. There were no farmlands, or factories; just miles
and miles of barren land, smattered with sporadic growths of the weed
Jugniflora Aforiensis. Tender coconut water was our respite from the
scorching heat enroute to the school at the village of Periasamipuram, our first destination.
Around
noon, we made our way to the school, where we were received by the local
Father and the teachers. It was in a large enclosed area, and contained
some open roofed areas which served as classrooms, apart from a large sand
filled courtyard in which the children sat around studying in groups. There
was full attendance that day, as examinations were being conducted. As it
was Christmas, there was also a festive mood, and preparations for
celebrating the occasion were being made.
We
were joined by the school principal and management, and we sat down to
discuss the project in the compound on chairs provided to us. They
explained to us the challenges faced by the school, and the
community’s needs for a hostel. They mentioned that most of the
people in the area were migrant laborers, who were absent for six months in
a year. During migration, the children went along with them, which impacted
their education. To address this problem, VIDIYEL Trust had proposed
conducting free coaching classes and summer classes for the children in the
area, specially the dropouts and child laborers.
 Our next stop was a
women’s Self-Help Group (SHG), located near the school campus. This
meeting was a very powerful experience for us. Thirty women who had
attended training on making fish based products (major livelihood in the
area is fishing) overwhelmed us with their passion and drive to empower
themselves and explore income generation opportunities. They demonstrated
their readiness to run SHG’s, and requested for initial seed funding
and startup equipment. As one woman put it “we send our
husbands to fish, our children to school, and then we have 6 hours in the
day to earn a livelihood for ourselves and take charge of our
lives’”– the determination and resolve in her voice
showed their commitment.
On our
way back to Vilathikulam we stopped at a few more schools, one of these
being the school at Naripaiyoor. Amidst the din of the neighboring
classes (these classes do not have walls separating them) the children were
intently listening and learning. The attraction for education was apparent
in their visages; all they needed was educational infrastructure and
financial support to realize their dreams and potentials. Both the
NGO’s had proposed adopting a rights based approach for addressing
these needs. The main features of this approach were the following:
·
Education
– Enrollment and retention of children in schools, augmented with
measures to improve quality of education,
·
Employment
– Providing skills training, livelihood training and career guidance
to children,
·
Empowerment
– Mobilize the community and create awareness amidst parents about
the importance of education, and women’s rights.
As we
headed back, we could  not help feeling that the area
was in dire need of long term rehabilitation efforts if integrated
development in that community was to be achieved. The current
infrastructure was quite inadequate: there was only one higher secondary
school in the area, and the nearest college was two hours away. There were
also no major livelihood opportunities besides of fishing. These problems
indicated the roles that an organization like ILP could play besides
providing funding – such as guiding the NGO’s to work with the
government to acquire basic infrastructure, sharing the experience of
women’s SHG from other projects and assisting the women there in
their venture and providing contacts to other organizations that can
promote new livelihood opportunities in the area.
We
left the place with the realization that ILP is going to be an intrinsic
part of the development in the region over the next few years, as the
NGO’s work with the people to find the right constituents that deliver
the promise of a literate and empowered community.
Padmaja Satyamoorthy
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