OTHER PROJECTS
REBUILDING A HOME
PACKIUM'S HOUSE
The 2019 India team spent one week working on two emergency housing projects in Palangi village where Little Lilies creche is located. Meanwhile, in the village of Samakadu, another student team worked with the team from Kids Health India to continue the cookstove project, started by the India team 2018, as well as taking on an emergency project of building a kitchen for a needy family.
In Palangi, as well as the work in Little Lilies Creche, the team invested in the renovation of a house that had been destroyed in the cyclone that devastated the area in November 2018. Pakium has been the ayah at Little Lilies Creche since its opening in 2002. From the day Little Lilies opened its doors, she was the first to make sure that the children were taken care of and that the creche was clean and welcoming. Her green fingers always at work in the beautiful garden where the creche children play, she planted the lilies that give the creche its name. Packium has spent most of her life working to support her neighbours, and she has been an important part of the success of Little Lilies creche.
When a cyclone hit Palangi in 2018, floods swept away the walls of Packium’s home. For months, she and her husband Karpaia slept in the rubble left by the floods, with only plastic sheets where the walls had been, but no protection from the monsoon rains. In April 2019, the India team cleared the site and provided the materials for a new build, while her husband, who carries stones for a living, set about the construction of their new home. By June 2019, with the materials supplied by the India team, Karpaia and Packium had succeeded in building their new home, brick by brick.