KOA’s Flood Relief Effort

In September 2014, as you know, our homeland Kashmir witnessed unprecedented floods. Like so many around the world, KOA under Dr. Surinder Kaul’s tenure as its president, also initiated a funds drive to help our unfortunate brethren that were directly affected by these floods. KOA has all along welcomed any opportunity to work with other non-profit organizations toward a common cause, and is indebted to the following organizations and members, shown in Table 1, who came forward to contribute a total of $54,225.80 towards the KOA’s initiative towards Flood relief efforts and for India-outreach program:

TABLE 1: Total Donations Collected

Donors	Amount
SVB Foundation, Inc.	$27,835.00
Children’s Hope India (CHI), Inc.	$10,000.00
Shirdi Sai Parivaar	$4,200.00
KOA Members	$12,190.80
Total	$54,225.80

Through the efforts of Rakesh ji Kaul, KOA program director of India-outreach, we received most of the funds from most of these charitable organizations, except a donation of $4200 from Shirdi Sai Parivaar that Pran ji Kaul (CA) secured for us.

The expenditure of the funds was primarily to defray the costs of the providing food and other relief supplies including the costs of customs clearance for such items as gas stoves, solar lamps and warm clothes (sweater, blankets, etc.) which were shipped to the folks in Jammu and Srinagar. This program was spearheaded by Dr. Sushma Kaul along with Anita Raina, Anil Dhar, Pickee Kaul, Kiran Safaya, and other volunteers along with other non-KOA organizations. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank KLM airlines for their assistance in shipping.

With these donations from KOA, AIKS team started the relief measures soon after the flood fury hit the Valley as well as Jammu province. In Jammu, relief was provided to the flood affected victims of Phalain Mandal and to the families who had shifted to Panjar, Udhampur district.

Though we sent some relief initially through AIKS, but we needed some help from an organization that actually worked in

Kashmir valley and could distribute relief to KPs in the valley. This was one of most challenging tasks to provide relief to those KPs in the valley who were affected by these floods, but did not have any direct contact with them. Dr. Shakun Malik, who was a KOA director from Maryland area, introduced me to Ashima ji. This is when we used services of Yakjah - an organization run by Ashima Kaul - to distribute flood relief funds to some deserving cases in Kashmir. Ashima ji is an independent journalist and peace practitioner and managing director of Yakjah, that had volunteers from the regions of Delhi, Jammu and Valley mobilizing friends, relatives, neighbors, colleagues and strangers through Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp, word of mouth to donate for flood relief.

In 2010, Yakjah registered as a social innovation for social transformation in Jammu and Kashmir.

Yakjah identified several KP beneficiaries still living in Kashmir that were in dire need of financial need. Ashima ji's reporting and status of the cases have been exemplary to say the least - she sent us complete details, pictures, audio as well as video clips of all affected families. See Table 2 for details:

Table 2: Donation paid directly to beneficiary through AIKS and Yakjah:

Beneficiaries	Donated Amounts	Details
Flood relief victims in Saddal, Panjar, Udhampur	$7,670	Gas stoves, solar lamps and warm clothes (sweater, blankets, etc.)
KP Beneficiary 1	$4,000	Owned a shop in Jawahar nagar located next to his house, which had been completely flattened. Also hurt during the floods for which he had to travel to Jammu and Delhi for treatment.
KP Beneficiary 2	$2,000	Her home in Jawahar Nagar was completely flattened and was living in a shed. As a single parent and two liabilities (her paraplegic brother-in-law and teenager son), she had used all her pension savings and taken loan from neighbors.
KP Beneficiary 3	$1,540	Resident of Jawahar Nagar, his house was badly damaged due to floods.
KP Beneficiary 4	$1,120	Two brothers, residents of Indira Nagar, shop owned by one brother was completely damaged unable to re-start it. The other brother is retired. Lost their belongings including gold they had saved for daughter's wedding.
KP Beneficiary 5	$400	Aged couple, lost all his belongings, and lived in Badgam quarters.
Total	$16,730
India Outreach	$37,496.79	Sharda Trust and Jagati school (for computer center, etc.)
Grand Total	$54,226.79

With GoI being best equipped to respond to the acute needs post flood, we were advised to focus on the long-term chronic needs of the community which would not make headline news and would therefore suffer from neglect. We focused on delivering relief to deserving individual beneficiaries facing acute humanitarian needs. As far as the chronic needs were concerned, we had Sh. Rakesh Kaul, KOA Program Director for India Outreach program, consult with the donors so that we obtain their concurrence to fund the programs such as Jagati Middle School and heritage center platform programs. As such, a balance of $37,496.79 was transferred to Sharda trust to support educational needs of children going to Jagati school, including setting up a computer center.

Since this effort took more than six (6) months, as we met several challenges along the way, Sai Parivaar representative Sh. Anand Iyer was pressing Pran ji for accountability as he had to present a report for its members. After the relief was provided to the beneficiaries, I prepared a PowerPoint presentation that was shared with Sh. Iyer through Pran ji Kaul. After going through our presentation, this is what he had to say about our efforts and reporting:

“…I reviewed the email and also the powerpoint presentation. Both look great. Thanks for providing such detailed information regarding SSP fund disbursement. This is the first that an organization has provided such detailed information. We really appreciate your efforts and following up on the funds that was provided to KOA.…”