KOCHI: The students of Government Vocational Higher Secondary School, East Maradi, continue to lend a helping hand to the flood-hit in Muvattupuzha and other parts of the state, a month after the floods. The other day the students belonging to the NSS unit and various other clubs of the school, along with the members of Vazhakulam kudumbha koottayma, visited the flood-hit people of Kuttanad.
According to NSS programme officer Sameer Siddiqui, nobody had come to the rescue of the 286 families residing in Ward 2 of Pulinkunnu panchayat. “The ward is located in a remote and inaccessible region of the Vembanad Lake. This inaccessibility actually worked against the families living here,” he said.
The students distributed grocery kits, dresses, medicines, candles, lingerie, sanitary napkins, bedsheets, toothpaste, brush, soap and over 2,000 litres of potable water. “The students also distributed over 5,000 notebooks, other study materials and bottles of cleaning lotion made by them,” he said.
The students were divided into small groups and were taken around the ward in boats, guided by ward member Benichan.
Preparing cleaning lotion
Instead of buying cleaning lotions from the market, the school students prepared one of their own. “They prepared 1,000 litres of cleaning lotion and distributed it among the flood-hit to help them clean their houses,” Sameer said.
To bottle the lotion they prepared, the students collected discarded mineral water bottles from the garbage heaps. “They cleaned the bottles, removed the labels and filled the lotion,” he said. On coming to know the students are preparing cleaning lotion for distribution among the flood-hit, Narayanan, a former alumnus of the school who owns a factory that manufactures plastic bottles, supplied some for free.