Gujarat Earthquake

On January 26, 2001 at 8.46 AM (IST), a devastating earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale shook the entire state of Gujarat resulting into toll of deaths and massive destruction of property, infrastructure and live stocks. Out of 25 districts of Gujarat , 21 of them having 181 talukas and 7,633 villageswere affected by the quake. According to government estimaes, a total of 19,904 people died and 1.66 lacs injured. A total of 3.55 lacs houses were destroyed and 8.68 damaged across the state.

Since the epicenter of the quake was 20 kms. North-east of Kutch, it caused maximum damage to Bhuj, Rapar, Anjar, Bhachau, Gandhidham and Monday talukas of Kutch district. After June 16, 1819 , this was the first time that Kutch had suffered such enormous loss of human lives and property.

Responding to the human tragedy, ActionAid India started the Sneh Samudaya program in 160 worst affected villages in 4 Block of Kutch district.

CHILD CENTRED ACTIVITIES - there are two major initiatives taken by Sneh Samudaya under child centered activities:

Day Care Centres: Day care centers were started with the objective of creating an enabling environment for the children within their own community so that they could cope up with the post disaster situation in a better way. It was also an attempt to temporarily fill up the gap created after earthquake as all schools were closed for few months.So far Sneh Samudaya has been able to start day care centers in 96 villages wherein during initial days approximately 5784 children used to come regularly. The same number of kids continued to come till July 2001. From August 2001 when Government schools were restarted , number of kids coming to the day care Centres started decreasing. In all places Sneh Samudaya had to change the timings of its Day Care Centres keeping in mind the Govt. school timings. Now on an average there are 25-30 children coming to each day care center. Regular nutritional support was provided to all 5784 children till August 2001. Nutritional support has now been discontinued at all centers except for a few ones.

Plethora of recreational and educational activities is being carried out regularly at each center. These activities include singing songs, creative dramatics, origami, pottery making, crafts training, indoor games etc. Apart from these activities, children were also taken out on short tours to see the historical places. Exchange programmes were also organized wherein children from one village went to another village and participated in cultural programmes. Children from Dhanwantary school, Bhuj ( a school for hearing impaired and speech impaired children) visited to Kharoi village where a cultural mela was organized. In this cultural mela apart from Dhanwantary school, children from seven other villages of Bhachau taluka namely Manphara, Kandel, Kunjisar, Badalgadh, Kharoi, Nilpar and Lakhawat also participated. All these recreational activities are having a very positive impact on the children as it has been proved as a very good therapy to overcome children's trauma.