Uttarakhand flood relief - Shelters for village Khumera Malla

The Rotary Club of Chennai Kilpauk swung into action instantly, on hearing of the great damage caused to humans and their property in the Hill State of Uttarakhand.

Monies were sent out immediately to the Rotary District relief fund and to RC of Srinagar, Garhwal.

Later Dr Nishol Pandey of Rotary EClub visited us from New Delhi and made a presentation on the work being carried out by his Club in Uttarakhand and RCCK immediately made  a transfer of unds to fund the erection of shelters for the village Khumera Malla up in the Himalayas.

The shelters are now done and ready to be handed over to the villagers.

Shelter at Village Khumera Malla, Uttarakhand.

Hearing Impaired Screening Camp - MG with RC of Galesburg - ROTI Project

This matching grant project which is partnered with Rotary Club of Galesburg, Illinois, started yesterday with the first screening camp and had a wonderful response.

Many residents of close to 19 villages  surrounding the camp had come and some of them staying as far as 35 kilometers away on the outskirts of North Chennai.  The campaign for calling people to get checked was extremely effective and from these villages whose population is close to about 4000 numbers, we were able to call about 200 of them to visit in a single day.  The effectiveness of the campaigning done by Dr Sandhya Ruban (of Eternity Foundation)  and her team of volunteers was fantastic, enabling it specifically call for patients with hearing abnormalities.

We had team of the following specialists :

DR KAMATCHIPANDIAN – DOCTOR ATTACCHED TO E N T DEPARTMENT K M C

MR PRAVESH – AUDIOLOGIST

MR SANDEEP – AUDIOLOGIST

We were also honoured to have the presence of Mrs Neela Govindaraj ( Speech Therapist and Language Assessor of specially challenged) who had accompanied with Ms Uma (a social service initiator who also works with IBM).  Both Mrs Neela and Ms Uma sat for a long time and helped in coordinating and handling the visiting patients. They interacted and counseled the visitors on a one to one basis, which was really interesting to see them doing their roles in gathering more insights to the various challenges faced by the villagers.

We also witnessed misery at its lowest point  in the case of certain individuals who felt extremely helpless with their lives.  Hence we could sense there was lots to be done in terms of community service to these villages, and there was potential for plenty of them who needed to be living in standard basic amenities.

Finally coming back to hearing impairment and hearing aid cases, we have crossed 100 deserving beneficiaries and individuals cases are being discussed in a couple of days with the Doctors, to analyse and shortlist hearing aids beneficiaries.

Camp to identify Hearing Impaired - 27th Oct 2013

While the RC Chennai Kilpauk has been providing hearing aids to those with hearing impairment the last few years we made a decision to depart from the usual practice of providing hearing aids to those who were identified and needing hearing aids.

This time our Project Chairman - Rtn Divyesh Palicha decided to hold a large one day camp to identify beneficiaries on the following
1. Many, do not accept that they have a hearing problem and continue to live as they do without seeking help, the elderly believe that it is because of age and the youngsters are shy and do not come forward.
2. If we do not conduct a camp to identify such people they may never seek help and will continue to live in such conditions for a longer time.

Divyesh was informed that if he conducts a camp only for the hearing impaired the response would be poor as people would come and spread the word that the camp was only for the hearing impaired and many would stay away from the camp and not be screeened. Divyesh and his team have planned to also have a GP who will first screen the attendees provide them with medication if any for any ailment they may or believe that they have and then send them through for the audiometry tests.

More than 10 Rotarians and over 20 volunteers participated in this camp. Divyesh has been planning and preparing for this camp the last 3 weeks.