Tsunami outreach tugs hearts
Georgian's aid in India stirs others

By BILL OSINSKI
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/23/05

CHENNAI, India — The terrible tidal waves have had at least one good aftereffect: a demonstration of just how small the "global village" has become.

The worldwide nature of the help that poured into the Indian Ocean disaster zone is exemplified by the story of a local Peachtree Corners woman.

Becky Douglas already had made connections in India through her agency Rising Star Outreach, which serves families in the leprosy colonies in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. After the tsunamis, she rushed to India, putting aside her agency's normal work to help people in the devastated fishing villages along the Indian Coast. And she did it with donations from Powder Springs to Potomac, Md.

One California woman gave her $70,000 for the effort, which includes replacing fishing boats in many areas where fishing is key to villagers' livelihood.

After an article about Douglas' project was published last week in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, readers pledged an additional $30,000, Douglas said. A woman from Powder Springs told Douglas she is starting a fund-raising drive in her community, aimed at "adopting" an Indian fishing village for the recovery period.

And at the Bullis School, a private high school in Potomac, Md., a student who heard of Douglas' project led a fund-raising drive that netted an eye-popping $79,000, Douglas said. The student, Lauren Prince, is a daughter of a supporter of Rising Star Outreach.

Teens empty wallets

Prince, a junior, and some of her friends started out by collecting cash contributions in empty water containers from the office water coolers at the school. Then two parents made matching contributions in the $10,000 range, said Patricia Mayo, events coordinator at Bullis. Many of the students' contributions came from baby-sitting earnings or emptying their piggy banks, she said.

"This has been a wonderful way for our students to witness that one individual can make a difference," Mayo said.

Prince said she felt compelled to raise money after hearing Douglas report to her mother on the disaster, a conversation her mother had placed on the speakerphone. "It really hit home that here was this lady, a longtime friend of my mother's, who was over there in the middle of things," Prince said.

The original goal of the students' drive was about $10,000, but they raised nearly eight times that amount. "I am completely in awe of people's generosity," Prince said. "We live lives that are polar opposites in many ways from the people there, but we wanted to help them."

Douglas said the response to the plight of the tsunami victims tells her that the brotherhood of man is something real and alive.

"It shows that we can have an impact on the lives of people we have very little in common with, people of different cultures, different religions," Douglas said. "The response has really made me proud to be an American."

Repairs get green light

Douglas said the Indian government has granted Rising Star permission to start its program to repair and replace fishing boats in seven coastal fishing villages whose losses have been surveyed by Rising Star. The villages are near the major city of Chennai, the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where most of the tsunami damage in India occurred.

Andal Balu, a native of Tamil Nadu who operates an import business in Norcross, said she was overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from metro Atlantans for a project to send clothing and medical supplies to the disaster zone.

"It wasn't just the Indian community," Balu said. "Some people even took their vacation time to help us. The way they opened their hearts and their wallets was remarkable."

The relief is going to a place that could hardly be more different from Peachtree Corners.

'Fisher folk' hit hard

In rural Tamil Nadu, the roads are not simply a way to get from here to there; they are where much of daily life is lived. Even in the villages, traffic is a nearly perpetual clog of bicycles, motorbikes, pedestrians, cars, trucks and buses whose drivers apparently assume that everyone and everything else will simply move out of their way.

Cows, regarded as sacred by the Hindus who make up the vast majority of the population, have the right of way all the time. Vendors pile their fruits and vegetables on the edge of the pavement. Sidewalks are rarely seen, even in the cities.

Up and down the long coastline, small villages of homes with brick walls and thatched roofs have been set up by the people many Indians call "fisher folk." Many of them have claimed prime beachfront property, since the fishermen need to be on or near the beach when they push their boats out into the surf.

But their nearness to the ocean also made them the most susceptible to its wrath.

The Indian government estimated that approximately 350 such villages were swamped by the tsunamis, resulting in the loss of about 150,000 boats.

A relief worker told of speaking with a man in his 80s who had fished the waters since he was a boy. "All my life, the ocean has been my friend," the fisherman said. "Now, my friend doesn't speak to me anymore."