The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Reaching out to the tsunami-hit

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jul 17, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Reaching out to the tsunami-hit

Staff Reporter

Peer groups counsel fishermen to remove the fear of sea Counsellors cautioned against an ongoing propaganda to destroy artisan fishing

CHENNAI: Do peers make the best counsellors? Perhaps so, if we are to believe Beulah or Palaniamma or any of the men and women who have stood beside their community at the time of need.

Post tsunami, even before the rebuilding began, these peer groups spread out into the affected areas and lent their shoulders to the sufferers. Last week, they grouped up again for a training session that will help them reach out to the affected masses and offer psychosocial counselling.

Hundred-odd men and women from Chennai, Tiruvallur, Kancheepuram, Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari, Tuticorin, Ramanathapuram and a few other districts had a peek into advanced training for counselling. A similar strength of counsellors received the training subsequently in Pondicherry to cater to Cuddalore, Nagapattinam and other coastal districts. ActionAid, an international funding organisation, worked with 10 organisations in the city under the project. The training programme was part of Thunai, a project for psychosocial intervention for tsunami victims, organised by ActionAid.

The counsellors will provide support to the community to identify means to resolve their day-to-day problems. E. Beulah Selvamani, a counsellor working in north Chennai, said fear of the sea was a common phenomenon perceived among the fishermen and their family in tsunami-affected areas.

"Our first task was to get them back to sea," Ms. Beulah said. "Some of them went back with the fear of the unknown because they did not have anything else to do." To remove their fear, the children were given toys that had strong moorings to the seaside, she said.

Addressing the counsellors, Babu Mathew, Country Director of ActionAid, cautioned them against an ongoing propaganda to destroy artisan fishing. Several funding agencies had demanded that fishing industry be modernised which would result in the entire industry passing on to the rich trawler owners, he said.

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