Pondicherry – India

For years a Lufthansa employee has been taking care of orphans in the vicinity of Chennai. Some of these children just could not be looked after by their families and without a save place to stay they would never have had the chance to get a good school education.

The Prana Project began shortly after the tsunami and what first started out as emergency aid, has grown into a successful project over the years. The core of this project is a special education school for more than one hundred gifted, yet poor children. The children all belong to different religions and castes. In normal school lessons, a child is distinguished by their different school uniforms, but in the project every child wears the same uniform and experiences joint and peaceful lessons which demonstrate that differing religious or caste affiliations do not constitute a reason for hostility or hatred.

Learning English is particularly important to the children besides sports, painting, dancing and playing musical instruments – but without the usual Indian drill. Besides the daily teachings, there is a healthy snack, a warm meal and free medical assistance.

The wives of the fishermen affected by the tsunami don’t sit idle either. They are being taught by a master tailor and after their training they can work with self-brought fabrics and thereby contribute to the livelihood of their families.

Children with disabilities are treated in the project’s own therapy centre. Progress had been made in teaching and showing the mothers how they can support the therapy at home. These therapies enjoy a high acceptance as traditional healing methods are combined with specific physiotherapy.

For quite some time, HelpAlliance has been committed to the “lucky children” who have lived at the project since 2007. The widely spread belief that there are people who, solely by their birth or existence, bring disaster and misfortune to others has become a problem of even higher explosiveness for those children born on the day of the tsunami. It results in marginalisation and stigmatisation of the mothers as well as to the children. Through education and/or therapy programmes the mothers are freed from their plights and are able to begin new lives in another social environment and the children turn from hoodoos to “lucky ones”.

Sangeetha is a “lucky one”. She has been one of the children who were supported by HelpAlliance and the Lufthansa employee. During the past years, she has been living in a girls’ home in Chennai where she finished her secondary school eduction. Now she studies Business and Administration at Pondicherry University. She share an apartment with her mother, a former migrant worker, and her sister in the Prana Project. She is no longer suffering from the attribute of being brought up in a home – again a stigma in India. She is already taking over some duties in the Prana Project and is moving on in giant steps to a self-determined life.