Category: Disaster Relief
disaster relief efforts of MAM
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Kerala flood relief activities – 17 Aug updates
You can donate if you wish to support Kerala flood relief activities. Go to Amma's website, select from the drop-down menu from here.https://t.co/nZSo1GzKzy Om Namah Shivaya#KeralaFloodRelief #Keraladonation — Amma Chimes (@AmmaChimes) August 18, 2018 ,•’“’•,•’“’•,,•’“’•,•’“’•, Swami Poornamritananda, serving food for the #KeralaFloodRelief campers at MAM Kochi pic.twitter.com/dRerl4hyKh — Amma Chimes (@AmmaChimes) August 17, 2018 ,•’“’•,•’“’•,,•’“’•,•’“’•, #AmritaVidyalayam Pathanamthitta #KeralaFloodRelief camp, food is being served. pic.twitter.com/3LwnMxE8Zk — Amma Chimes (@AmmaChimes) August 17, 2018 ,•’“’•,•’“’•,,•’“’•,•’“’•, More than 30 #AmritaVidyalayam schools across Kerala are working as #KeralaRelief centers for the flood affected citizens. pic.twitter.com/i86GPlCsKs — Amma Chimes (@AmmaChimes) August 17, 2018 ,•’“’•,•’“’•,,•’“’•,•’“’•, Swami AmritaKripananda…
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A community center for Batwadi
Batwadi is a special village. Located on the hillside above flood ravaged areas of Chandrapuri, Batwadi found room for us to build 15 “Amma Houses” scattered across their fields. The people of Batwadi have embraced Amma and everything we are doing in Uttarakhand. Most noteable is how so many villagers will turn out to help with whatever project is at hand. Women young and old, children, and eventhe men are there working with us a every turn. The Pipal Tree Temple is the heart of Batwadi and serves as the open air meeting space for all village events. We have…
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A song from the ruins
The scenes in all villages are similar… scenes of desolation. Where there were settlements, there are mounds of rubble. Almost nothing is left of the villages here. Almost no houses survive. And even in the towns and cities have not been spared – townships like Bhaktapur and Saku have seen large scale devastation, where vast stretches of blocks have come down. Even cities where you would houses to be have more steel, cement,.. But even here we see so many empty lots with heaps of rubble showing that a building once stood there. We visited many villages in Sindhupal Chowk…
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Where does that door lead to?
We are in Sindhupal Chowk, the most affected area as far as causalities and maybe even in damages. The district has seen 1,800 or more causalities. When we commit such figures to paper they seem to lose their life – one more figure in an endless stream of figures. I stood in front of a heap of rubble – stones, mud, wooden slats and beams, and rattling tin sheets. I went closer to see if anyone was around, but was greeted by an absence. This was not stone and wood – this was a home. It maybe had a mother…
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One wonders how they managed in Nepal
30 April, Nepal If we could think of a name for this small lane, it could well be ‘Misery Lane’. The houses here are big. They used to house joint families, some houses having 20 or 30 members. But unfortunately these were old multi-storey structures made of bricks and mud….and it all came tumbling down. Some lost their lives but in kilometer long stretches which look like war zones – bombed out – almost everyone has lost their houses and all they had. But the people are resilient…scavenging through the rubble that was their home for anything of use. Some…
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Prayers for Nepal
The reconstruction work that has been done after the Uttarakhand Floods of 2013 by Amma’s “Embracing the World” teams and other NGO’s could not have been completed without the help of Nepali workers. With grace, they have shouldered the burden of carrying construction materials over very steep trails to all of our housing sites. Their women break rock all day along the riverside, making gravel so we can pour concrete. They live for months in makeshift camps along the river, working to provide for their families back in Nepal. Please pray for these wonderful, gentle people as they return home…
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A sharp jolt accompanied by a roar from within earth
We are in Nepal to assess the situation here….. The towers are down, there is barely any power and water and people stay out in open parks, fearing to return to their damaged homes. Any open area is dotted with tents and tarpaulins… Thousands of people either sit, many sleep, some eat what they can get. Many are from outside of Nepal, waiting to return home, but the scarcity of fuel and vehicles has driven up the rates. What would have cost them Rs.500 before may cost them 2,500 or much more now…so they wait. There is no news from…
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Actively supporting education in Uttarakhand
When I saw this room, I thought it had been abandoned for some time. Instead, I was shocked to find it was an active classroom in use only one week before. Judging by the posters left on the wall, this is a science classroom. As response to the immediate needs of Uttarakhand flood victims wraps up, Amma has asked us to focus on education to benefit the overall population. Our approach is four fold: 1) Using the labor of IVUSA volunteer students from Japan, we have demolished two old classroom buildings like the one above at Inter-colleges in Kandara and…
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Constructive destruction
Nothing is wasted and a great care is taken to keep everything from the demolition. Each stone is kept aside for the construction of the new building and the boards can be used for making benches and desks for the schools.