Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu

SOS Children’s Village Nagapattinam

SOS Children's Village Nagapattinam consists of 12 family homes, the village director's house, a community building, co-worker residences and an administration and service area. It is situated in a residential area of Nagapattinam town opposite the Collector's office. All the basic facilities such as markets, schools and hospitals are available within two to three kilometres.

Other SOS Projects in Nagapattinam

The SOS Children's Village also runs Family Strengthening Programmes. Their aim is to help parents (especially single mothers) to get by and to keep them from abandoning their children, for example by providing child day care or by donating school books and uniforms. Families are empowered by means of skill training, career counselling and help during the search for a job. Nutritional, educational and health support is provided and families are put in touch with self-help groups and social security schemes.

SOS Children's Villages tries to raise awareness on parenting skills, hygiene and child rights, and cooperates with Panchayats (the lowest level of the local government structure in India) to identify beneficiary families and to establish a link to the local authorities.

Background to Nagapattinam

On the morning of 26 December 2004, a tsunami struck coastal areas around the Indian Ocean. The sea surge was caused by an earthquake off the coast of Banda Aceh, Indonesia. It left more than 300,000 people dead.

The worst affected areas in India were Pondicherry and coastal areas of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala provinces. From the first day on, SOS Children's Villages ran emergency relief programmes and helped reconstruct family homes and community buildings.

At the beginning, the focus was on providing psychological care, food and shelter to the victims. The next step was trying to locate surviving relatives of children and finding out if they could take care of the children. Finally, it was decided to build two new SOS Children's Villages for children who had lost all their relatives.

Nagapattinam and Pondicherry were chosen for the sites of these villages as these areas were most severely struck by the tsunami.