TIRUVANANTHAPURAM : Post-deluge, the people from across the state and from outside have joined together and opened their hearts and wallets to rebuild flood-hit Kerala. With this motive, four NGOs- SUSTERA, AGP, CDI and SARSAS, have come together for a noble cause - to distribute school bags to children in areas ravaged by the flood.As the schools are reopening, children need to go back to schools. But as they lost everything to the floods, they don’t have notebooks or a school bag. Rising to the occasion, the NGOs in the city have set up collection centres across the state to arrange school kits and bags for the children.
A calamity like this has left the children in stress arising from the sudden change and most of them had addressed the problem of losing their notebooks. Some NGOs have already come forward to restore their lives to normalcy by distributing school bags along with the essential study materials in it. The team has started collecting usable bags through various collection centres set up across the state which could be of help to the children.
The idea was mooted by Sabareesh Pillai, IRS, deputy director of Revenue Intelligence, Kozhikode. He thought once the schools reopen, they have to provide support and coping systems to students through teachers during first 10 days. Thus, there is a holistic approach for tackling the immediate post-incident situation sensitively.
In this context, a couple of individuals mooted the idea of providing bags to students especially in worst affected areas such as Chengannur, Tiruvalla, Ranni, Aluva and Chalakkudy. “We saw many children lost their bags and notebook in the flood,” said Ganesh Gopal, coordinator of Kerala region. “So we thought of sourcing these bags without any initial cost since it’s understood that many people have a lot many conference and seminar bags at home which are of good quality and can be used by students straight away.”
The collection points have been opened at Bengaluru, Thiruvananthapuram, Alappuzha and Kozhikode. The school kit includes a water bottle, towel, 5 notebooks, tiffin box, pencil box, pencil, pen and eraser.
Ramachandran Textiles at Attakulangara has offered to give ‘Back to school’ kits at a discounted price at their store, which one can buy and donate to the collection desk at the store.