26th December, 2004 will forever be etched in the memory of all those affected by the Tsunami as the most horrific day of their lives. In India, this unprecedented disaster left over 16000 people dead and massive loss to crops, homes, property and livelihood. More than 2.9 million people were affected in some way or the other. The Indian Red Cross Society, auxiliary to the Indian Government, rushed in their volunteers to help by way of providing shelter, clothing, first aid, fishing nets and boats. Our interventions with support from partner national societies like the Spanish, Canadian and Hong Kong Red Cross took shape of short term and long term post Tsunami recovery programmes some of which are still going on.

Our state branches also pitched in with support and their effort is worth congratulating. The Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu branches have carried on these programmes with much enthusiasm. Many of these Red Cross interventions were evaluated and re-evaluated by us to assess whether they were on the right track. We wanted to see if we were able to impact livelihood recovery and took pains to assess our end process beneficiaries.

We are very happy to have undertaken long term livelihood recovery projects in the Tsunami affected states over the last one decade, since they have all positively benefitted the communities. We have also been able to publish our results in scientific peer reviewed journals. I would urge all societies in the Red Cross movement to undergo scientific rigour and try to publish the results of humanitarian activities in peer reviewed index journals. Once our results are published, the profiles of our societies will go up and we can also then approach the donors for greater funding, based on this evidence based documented results.

Dr S P Agarwal
Secretary General,
Indian Red Cross Society