RCC at Kovalam 2nd Report

Dear Friends

Our second meeting at Kovalam with reference to the formation of the RCC at Kovalam was held yesterday.

Members Present : Velu, Mani, Ravindran and Revathi.

About 12 members from the village of which 2 were new members who had not attended the first meeting.

Mr. Joseph headmaster- and Narayanan.

There seems to be a small issue with the two PLF Leaders preventing some of the members from attending the meeting, because they were not consulted by the others before attending the last meeting. Narayanan has said he will take care of this, because the RCC has nothing to do with PLF and HLF leaderships.

The formal meeting was started with a discussion on the major problems to be identified and solutions sought for the village community.

What came across was, since the time of the Tsunami, several organsations have come foward to help- but they have not really succeeded because sustained follow up was lacking and people went back to their old ways. A good input for us to take away from this meeting.

Problem No 1 : Cleanliness. Clean Environment.

We distributed about a 100 cotton bags which were primarily small shopping bags, so the villagers could carry their own cotton bags for their vegetable and grocery shopping. It appears there are 1700 homes in the 9 wards of Kovalam. The conclusion was that RCCK will provide the cut components for the bag , along with the handle and thread. The village tailors would sew the bags for a small fee. They will come back to us with printing cost for the RI, RCCK and RCC Logos on the bag. If cost is lower even the printing will be done in the village. At the formal inauguration of the RCC- 1700 bags will be distributed - one to each home.

The members wanted us to hold meetings with the traders to educate them on the need to do away with plastic bags, and keep a supply of low priced cotton bags , charge a small fee for the bag and thereby inculcate the practise of people bringing their own shopping bags.

A few good ideas came up on how to place responsibility on the people to keep their surroundings clean.

Problem No 2 : Open areas in the village still being used as toilets.

The members felt the village folk need to be educated on the use of toilets- and more of the dry toilets must be provided in the public places- along with a small bathing area for women. We inspected a couple of the dry toilets in the village- and indeed it is working very well. So as a bigger project- perhaps we need to tie up with a sponsor- , Matching Grant to build more public toilets. Cost per toilet is about Rs. 15000.00 according to Naryanan who has so far constructed about 40 such toilets. 10 are in the Kovalam village.

Literacy: in about 2 of the HLF groups about 18 members each have been identified as being not literate. The members expressed that they need to be motivated to attend the Adult Literacy Program- because most feel they are managing well, without being literate. This will indeed be a tough task.

A formal discussion with Mr. Joseph on how to take this forward is needed. Our members present felt that we need to give a small monetary incentive to those who complete the training program.

Gainful employment/ Increasing Income : The members expressed that with rising costs , ways to provide work within the village have to be explored.

I offered to train a few members in the Leather Industry, because several jobs in the leather goods sector, shoe uppers, woven mats could be done in SHG's in the village. They will identfiy about 4-5 members who could be trained in our factory, for about two months, and they could then go back and train the members in the village. Thereafter work could be provided for them in their village. However, considering that it would take almost 3 hours to reach Ambattur from Kovalam, I will speak to other members in the industry located closer to the ECR to take this up. There is tremendous workforce shortage in the industry so this idea should work.

( Request other members in our club to think of other areas of work that could be done at the village through SHG' ) . Narayanan says place can be found within the village.

A mission statement had been prepared by Velu and was read out and explained to the members by Mr. Joseph.

It was decided to defer the choice of leaders and announce the target date for the formal opening of the RCC to the next meeting , as we need to get more members involved in the RCC. However, we believe Mr. Joseph could be the chairman of the RCC.

One of the women came up to me and conveyed that prostitution continued to be a major problem in the village- and these women were not being accepted into any SHG- so this was one problem that we should work on.

Next meeting on 6th March at 3 PM.

Thanks and regards

Revathi