The cyclone at 3 am on October 29, 1999 that ravaged the coast of Orissa was one of the worst to affect the subcontinent in this century.

Aparajita is a civil society response to the devastating cyclone in Orissa. A number of individuals and institutions came together under the aegis of Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI) to provide relief to the cyclone affected people of Orissa.

The immediate interventions were proposed on broad principles of involving most of the population and fulfilling basic needs such as shelter, safe drinking water, nutrition, health care and wage earning opportunities for daily wage earners. The principles for cash for work are to be employed for all restoration and renovation work.

It was noticed that the people had access to cereals and lentils through PDS and other channels. Although these provided basic nourishment, the vitamin and mineral supplements could only be met through vegetables and green leaves. In recognition of this fact, the first livelihood support that Aparajita provided was of kitchen garden seeds to almost all families in the targeted villages. A package of five varieties of greens and vegetables were identified with advice from an agriculture expert. A vegetable supplier was identified and the cost of each package was for Rs. 25/-. The seeds were distributed to all families immaterial of their social status or how badly were they affected by the cyclone. Volunteers, prior to the distribution of the seeds, informed the villagers of the initiative and asked them to prepare a small patch of land behind their shelter for the purpose. In all over 10,000 families received kitchen garden seeds.

The schools reopened after about a month's standstill. But all the school books belonging to the students had been lost during the calamity. With the final exam round the corner and with some families hardly being able to afford to buy new sets of books, Aparajita took upon itself the responsibility to provide learning materials to the children. After discussion with the teachers of the concerned schools the book bank concept emerged. It proposed to supply fifteen sets of books to each class from standard I to standard Vth. These sets were then borrowed by the student groups from the book bank on rotation. The initiative was greatly appreciated by the parents and the teachers.

Formation of groups was a time consuming affair. Firstly it was not an easy task to fully understand the dynamics of groups, and to persuade the group members to agree to the concept of self help group and micro finance. Secondly, in many places the concept of a group was new. Lastly, identification of genuine beneficiaries also posed some problems. At time found that some of hem did not fall under the Aparajita vulnerable group criteria or they were already receiving monetary support from other agencies. Eventually the capacity of the people was identified and groups formed for the following activities:

Following the aftermath of the cyclone, the health scenario was grim with even the basic health services having got wiped out. Hence, it was decided to establish a community health care system to meet basic health needs of people in the cyclone devastated areas. This included:

It was also decided to build the capacity of the community for provision of primary health care by providing training on first aid and common disease treatment, water sanitation and epidemic control and antenatal and post natal care, awareness on women health and low cost nutrition and by providing village-information centres. In this health intervention the resources that were utilized were:

These volunteers, TBAs and self help group members were provided training in order to enhance knowledge and practices on the basic health issues. Since these volunteers hailed from the villages themselves they understood the village problems well and this made the effort a direct community health intervention.

Addressing women's specific needs has been an important aspect of the programme. It has the following components:

Right from these beginning it was decided that nothing would be doled out free of cost. For any activity which has to benefit the larger community or any individual, peoples participation would be central and a must. Initially this was difficult as people were still in a relief mode. There were numerous agencies which were still distributing relief materials thus crippling the initiative of the people to move away from dependency towards rebuilding their lives on their own steam. Aparajita however stuck to its agenda of self sustenance, supporting livelihood through the cash for work programme.

The most vulnerable were identified and provided with goats /pigs, to enable them to reap the benefits out of activities like goatry and livestock maintenance.

The super cyclone of 29th October 1999, had devastated 12 coastal districts of Orissa. The communities’ worst affected were the fisher folk and the agriculturist. The Prime Minister‘s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) has provided monetary support to project Aparajita for the rehabilitation of 2500 fisher folk families living in the coastal belts of Astarang, Erasama and Mahakalpara blocks.

The objectives of the programme were: