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Cowl Bazaar a small village abutting the airport runaway, was our community services hub since 1967¬68. Rtn. Schnebel of our Club and his wife were already involved in extending help to the villagers in their personal capacity. The men of the village had no permanent avocation and were doing some petty manual work in the quarries nearby; they were entirely dependent on the income the women (flower vendors). The Panchayat Primary School (up to class V) had only a thatched, leaky roof. Our Club had adopted this village and provided integrated help in improving the condition. This concept of adoption of a village was new to the entire Rotary World and R.I. President hailed the project and our Club; he wanted the other Clubs to emulate the example. The draft plan was to implement welfare measures in phases and as a first step it was proposed to provide a permanent structure to house the school. Anne Mary George, wife of Rtn. C.V. George, a renowned Civil Engineer, came out with an unique parabolic design, using low-cost reinforcing materials for the concrete roof. This building, even today, attracts the attention of the people passing by Cowl Bazar Road. We constructed a platform around the community well to prevent water stagnation, and an overhead tank. The Club members regularly participated in the school functions. The children at the school used to put up well-rehearsed programmes. The Club provided special lunch and gifts to them on those occasions. The villagers had special affection for Rtn. Schnebel and his wife. The Club continued its association with the village for many years and provided help to the community by way of health camps, improvements to the school, provision of piped water, providing TV Set for their entertainment etc. |
It is worth mentioning that the then Governor of Madras, H.E.Sukhadia visited the village for the inauguration of one of our projects. Since, we were actively carrying out several welfare measures at Cowl Bazar, we were taking our visitors to the village to show them around the place. When Rtn.& Ann Dana Berg visited the place, they were so impressed with the work done by us that they made a spot donation of U.S.$ 400 to be used for any of the projects at the village. Likewise, one of the members of a visiting GSE team from US, a school teacher, started collecting old books soon after her return to her hometown and sent a crate full of books for use at the school. It was an Herculean task for Rtn. Vijaykumar to clear them through the customs during the height of our Foreign Exchange crisis and practically everything had to be cleared after paying duty. Since the books were not of much use to the school we had to find other schools who could make use of them. Nevertheless, with whatever books that were retained at the village school, we started a library and named it after Rtn. Dana Berg. This gesture of ours was very much appreciated by the Dana Berg family and they donated further sums to the Club's projects soon after the death of Rtn. Dana Berg. To perpetuate his memory and his association with our Club, we decided to name the Center for Environmental Studies we were setting up at the Anna University, a project which remains incomplete for various reasons.
After over ten years association, the Club had to
reluctantly withdraw our focus from the village when the rival
political groups in the village made our association difficult.
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