NGO Networking Self Help Group India Kolkata

AYLA hit Patharpratima

For the last several years the far-flung and inaccessible island villages of Sunderban Delta region have become the area of intervention by SPAR and from our original working area in Patharpratima now we are extending our various development action and intervention there.

As an organization always committed to the pro-people interest, SPAR has been able to address the immediate issues related to the lives and livelihoods of the people and accompany them in their journey to empowerment.

On the 25^th of May 2009, the devastating blow of the cyclone named Ayla erased and destabilized the normalcy of bucolic life and livelihood in Sunderban, and the poverty stricken poor people have become the worst victims of the disastrous natural calamity.

Though the relief is not our proclaimed ideological agenda, from the ideological position of participatory people’s action for natural disaster resistance, we have determined to extend our material support and co-operation, to the people, for their sustenance and to meet their immediate requirements.

Sridharnagar one of the early referral villages of SPAR, has been one of the severely devastated islands of the Sunderban.

We have decided to go there on 23^rd of June, 2009, to explore the intensity of the devastation and depth of endangered circumstances. An organization experienced in the sphere of food security, we have gone there, to find out how to co-operate with the people in their collective effort to overcome the aftermath of devastation.

In our ideological sphere people’s organization is an essential agency for development action rooted in the community. For the cyclone related information, we have to depend on the information collected by POs and simultaneously we have not ignored the information of panchayat and other government departments.

To channelise resources which we have decided to distribute to the community, the local people’s organization extended their cooperation to us in many ways and we have considered their list of affected people. We finalized the list in the appropriate participatory way in consultation with the POs.

From the village community hall, the Deputy Director of SPAR, Mr. Rabin Middey and Finance Officer Ms. Mali Mondal and other workers of SPAR started to distribute the materials such as dry food like biscuits, clothes, and mosquito nets, collected by the professionals of SPAR.

The destitute people of the community were describing their plights to the professionals of SPAR Mr. Middey listened to their present problems and said the time had come to take the collective action.

Mali Mondal pointed out the sanitation problem faced by the community and especially by the women.

We have been inspired to see the tremendous spirit of the community to resist the devastation of the disaster. In our way to the community hall we have been able to interact with the affected people who have told us their horrible experience, during the devastation.