Goals of the blog

Greetings to all!! Past, present and future friends of Sevai!!!

The idea of starting this blog came to me during a conversation with Jonathan, who volunteered at Sevai for three months, working for a microfinance project and an early childhood education project. He told me about the Indian team there, but also about the other volunteers who traveled to Tamil Nadu to help with Sevai projects.

Amongst others, Marie-Anne and Marion worked with him on the microfinance project, four young students of Supelec helped rebuilding the Sevai website or working with Indian workers in the fields, and the young people from ICHEC in Brussels, as they do every year, financed and worked on a large housing project.

Yesterday, while I was talking to Govindaraju via Skype, Clemence, a young film director, was with him; she will be projecting popular films in the villages near Trichy, including in each one of them several commercials promoting HIV-AIDS prevention… When I was at Sevai in February, Sebastien, a young engineer, was working on a solar oven project launched by a Sevai team two years ago. Every one of these encounters are important to me, to the volunteers and to the people of Sevai, as, beyond the humanitarian projects, they were encounters of friendship and of exchange.

I started wondering where these people were and what they had become, and I thought that they too might be curious… Thus this blog could be a place where we could all exchange news about our lives after Sevai, about the projects we worked on and what they have become, who is working on them now… It is a way of keeping this chain of solidarity that was created around Sevai together.

For the last eight years I have known Sevai, thanks to my friend Benjamine who has been working with them for the last 20 years, I have been thoroughly impressed by the number, the diversity and the great quality of the volunteers that have met with Sevai’s path at a precise moment of their lives. I realized that every year for the last 20 years, there are more than 20 people who go to Sevai for a few days, a few weeks, a few months, or even years… Not forgetting all those who did not have the chance to travel there, but who help us morally and through financial help!

This is the extraordinary wealth I would like to bring together as a, organized network with this blog: beyond the articles that will be written to inform you about projects or fields of work and research (construction, solar oven, agriculture, microfinance, health, education…), my idea is to put together a directory of Sevai friends, and a vade-mecum for the new volunteers (including information about accommodation, food, transports, health issues when living and working at Sevai).

I hope that you too will have the time to add your touch to this blog. Please contact me to get the code.

I will ask M. Govindaraju to give us direct news, as well as to inform us of his doubts, questions and problems.

Let us not forget that your donations (via OFI in France for example, see links) are more than welcome!!

Thanks you for your comments and propositions!!!

... and thank you to Jonathan for his translation....