S.P. Udayakumar ('90)

July 14, 2005

Greetings from West Long Branch, New Jersey (USA) where I am teaching a special course on Conflict Transformation at the Governor's School, Monmouth University. Being away from home and school and all the tsunami-related activities finally gives me the time to write a detailed report on all our activities. Please allow me to share with you this mid-year report on our ongoing activities and futures plans.

SACCER School: The school has just started its third academic year with some 100 children (we are still getting some new admissions). We have also added 5th grade this year. Our teachers and non-teaching staff are doing our best to provide inexpensive quality English education to rural children from the neighboring farming and fishing villages. We have just finished constructing a large Kindergarten classroom and have named the building after our American (host) parents, Mr. Donald Kramer and Ms. Jeannie Kramer. We have named the main building that we constructed back in 2002 after Mr. G.J. Watumull and Mrs. Ellen Watumull, the parents of two of our benefactors and friends, Ms. Radha Watumull Homay and Ms. Lila Sahney. We are naming our classrooms after Ms. Homay, Ms. Sahney, Mr. Robert Aspeslagh, and Ms. Irmgard Meyer. There is also a "Philomena and Dieter Fischer Children's Park" with two swings, two seesaws, a slide and a merry-go-round. Moreover, the school also has "Michael and Mary Pat True Library" that has some 650 books, and several newspapers and magazines. We have just created an organic garden in our school with a patch of land for each class so that our children are able to connect with the Earth, work with their hands, and appreciate organic food and good nutrition.

SACCER Vocational School: The vocational school has been a real success. We have four sewing machines, an embroidery machine, five typewriters, five computers and all the required furniture. Two qualified young women teach sewing and typing (English and Tamil) classes. We have also recruited a professional computer teacher to teach Microsoft Office, DTP, CPP and Tally courses to the computer students. We have more than 25 needy young women from the neighboring fishing and farming villages learning these completely free courses. Most of these young women are affected by the recent tsunami directly.

SACCER Vocational Centre for Women: We have already established these Centres in seven coastal villages in Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari districts of Tamil Nadu (Koottapuli, Keezha Manakudi, Mela Manakudi, Pallam, Kadiapattinam, Singaravelar Colony and Erayumanthurai). We are in the process of setting up such vocational centres in five more coastal villages (N. Oovari, S. Oovari, Kovalam, Leepuram, and Mullorthurai). These Centres are managed by the parish priests of these respective villages and some Centres work better than the others. However, the overall result has been very good as at least 20- 30 young women come to these Centres to learn sewing and embroidery everyday
.
Young Fisherwomen Entrepreneurship Training: The fisherwomen have always played an important supportive role in the fish business by auctioning fish at the seaside or by vending fish to the neighboring villages and towns. The modern young women in fishing villages do not fancy carrying fish on their heads to the nearby places. While their freedom of choosing the profession of their choice should be respected and encouraged, it is equally important to create avenues and opportunities for them to specialize in the fish trade. The idea is to bring more professionalism to the fish business and to bring more dignity and security to the young women in that business.

In order to achieve that, we are offering a set of courses to groups of thirty prospective young women entrepreneurs from coastal villages for a period of one month on the following topics: Sea Education; Fish Education; Trading and Commerce (with focus on fish business); Sales and Marketing (with focus on fish business); Share Markets; Book-keeping, Accountancy and Tally; Cooperatives; Insurance Schemes; Entrepreneurship Training; Management and Human Resources; Office and Technology; Basic Computer Skills, Email, Internet; Legal Guidance; Banking and Finance. The first batch is going to be trained in September 2005 and Women Without Borders, a Vienna-based NGO, may help the trainees to set up cooperatives and run their own fish businesses. We plan to carry out more training sessions together.

Publications: We have already published a 40-page book in Tamil on Disaster Education (For Trainees) and are about to put out two more comprehensive books on Disaster Education (in English) and Disaster Education (for Trainers) in Tamil. We are also planning three short handbooks on Nutrition Education, Cancer Education and Domestic Abuse Education, all of which will be distributed freely in fishing and farming villages.

Day Care for the Elderly: Since there are so many abandoned and uncared for elderly men and women languishing in poverty and misery and loneliness in our area, we are planning to set up a "Day Care for the Elderly" that starts at 10:00 AM and ends at 5:00 PM. The participants will come to a rented house where a cook will serve them lunch and tea (in the morning and evening) and a social worker will engage them with recreational activities and, if needed, counseling (This project will be a lot more manageable for us right now than a full-time old age home). We may need roughly $300 per month to run one such day care for 15 elderly people. We may find some local donations in kind; and any help for this project would be greatly appreciated.

You can send in your donations to:
Tamilnadu Foundation USA, Inc.
(A Non-profit Charitable Tax Exempt Organization)
Mr. Mani Rajendran, Treasurer
1873, Morgan Circle,
Naperville, IL, 60565, USA.
Phone: 412-492-8706
Web: http://www.tnfusa.org/
Email: mani@numerictech.com

Our Address:
SACCER Trust
42/27 Esankai Mani Veethy
Parakkai Road Junction
Nagercoil 629 002
Tamil Nadu, India
Phone: 91-4652-240657
Web: http://www.saccer.info (under construction)
Email: drspudayakumar@yahoo.com, spudayakumar@gmail.com

Thanking you for your kind support and encouragement in all our
projects, I send you best regards and all peaceful wishes.

Sincerely,
S.P. Udayakumar

BIO:  S.P. Udayakumar earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Hawaii in 1996.  In 1993 he and his wife Meera purchased 15 acres of land near the southern tip of India and founded SACCER, and in 1994 Johan Galtung visited to dedicate the school.  In 2000 Kumar co-founded the Green Party of India.  Kumar worked for the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota for three years, returning to India full time in 2001.  He writes, "I grow banana, coconut, and rubber on our land; write columns for some Indian newspapers and international agencies; and teach peace studies around the world.  I am also deeply involved in a nonviolent struggle against the upcoming Koodankulam nuclear power project."  Kumar's publications include "Presenting" the Past: Anxious History and Ancient Future in Hindutva India (Praeger 2005) and Handcuffed to History: Narratives, Pathologies, and Violence in South Asia (Praeger 2001). 

 

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