In towns such as these, local NGOs have the best knowledge and expertise to address reconstruction at a grass-roots level. All photos were taken in or around Mamallapuram, India, by Dasra. Mamallapuram is located on the coast of Tamil Nadu, north of Chennai.

When the tsunami roared out of the Indian Ocean on December 26th, 2004, its crashing waves changed more than the landscape it obliterated. They also changed forever the nature of the many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working at the grass-roots level in communities throughout the region.

In fact, we are seeing a paradigm shift in that grass-roots organizations are playing a leading role in both relief and long-term reconstruction. We have seen during this crisis that these organizations—those arising from the communities they serve, indigenously-led, and focused on specific, sometimes nuanced community needs—they have the best chance to translate outside resources into direct humanitarian assistance.

In Mamallapuram, India, the Society for Education and Action (SEA) educates the children of fishermen in Tamil Nadu’s coastal villages. When the tsunami struck, SEA’s leadership immediately began to secure the necessary food, medicines, clothing, and temporary housing for those affected in these villages. Before international relief efforts were able to reach their part of the province, SEA had already coordinated the delivery of services using local connections to 13 villages along the coast.

SEA represents those NGOs with the capacity to interpret the most pressing needs of their communities into the potential for lasting growth. Despite an annual budget of less than US$6,000 prior to the disaster, SEA has been able to dispense effectively up to US$100,000 in aid from outside sources, directly benefiting a much broader area than that in which their original programs operated. Moreover, SEA has made itself known as a strategic, entrepreneurial organization, as it expects to go forward with a much larger annual budget driven by a broader base of funders convinced that their investments in this group's core mission will be neither lost nor squandered.

SEA’s example is not unique. We have seen numerous small, locally-based NGOs throughout the affected region secure essential resources by working within local distribution systems and capitalizing on familiarity with local governments as well as personal knowledge of what must be done and who can do it. Groups such as Protecting Environment and Children Everywhere in Sri Lanka, which works to prevent young children from entering the sex trades, as well as Sanghmitra Service Society, which educates neglected children in rural Indian villages, have mobilized local resources to provide immediate relief to tsunami victims. Additionally, they will continue to keep their fingers on the collective pulse of the villages which need their work and from which they themselves arose.

This is not to imply that large-scale relief organizations have no place. In the Aceh province of Indonesia, for example, the NGO community fared no better than did the general population when the tsunami struck. The devastation of these groups created a situation in which huge amounts of relief needed to be administered without any indigenous infrastructure whatsoever. Large organizations such as the Red Cross, Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere, and United Nations Children’s Fund—all with experienced and well-coordinated programs for relief assistance—could import the massive quantities of food, medicine, housing supplies and clothing that Aceh required in the days immediately following.

But we have come to believe that, when given a choice, local development is both more sustainable and more cost-effective. It makes little sense to bring in Western doctors, for example, to treat tsunami victims when local Indian doctors can fly to Tamil Nadu from Mumbai and work for a fraction of the expense. It makes little sense to import expensive goods for emergency relief when they can be procured locally—from an adjacent province or even from a regional country—for a portion of the outside price, a practice which can stimulate a struggling economy. Sweeping into disaster areas with large stockpiles of goods is not always the best policy for relief organizations, nor is it always culturally-sensitive.

Long-term reconstruction, too, will benefit from an approach anchored in grassroots organizations, building from the ground up. How often have we seen natural disasters strike vast regions with developing economies and rampant social problems, only to see the same exploitive or unfair structures recreated during reconstruction? Reconstructing the communities affected by the tsunami will take years. Rebuilding basic infrastructures—roads, water supply systems, buildings—will only be part of the process. Grass roots organizations, especially those with missions targeted toward the development of civil society, can author new social parameters that affect the manner in which rebuilt communities educate their children, provide economic opportunities, and safeguard the public welfare.

In this light, we will see profound changes in the nature of the social issues these groups are tackling. The entire Indian Ocean Basin will be subject to social pressures deriving from the tsunami for years to come. Reconstruction will not be complete once some semblance of an infrastructure is restored and the quality of life in the afflicted areas will be governed by more than rebuilt houses, hospitals and schools.

The British Broadcasting Corporation and Cable News Network have already issued reports of organized rings of child traffickers preying on orphaned or separated children. Broken families will be compelled to enlist their children in potentially hazardous labor situations, and, sadly, there will be many in this region eager to participate in exploitive and abusive trades. The disruption of health services may lead to the outbreak of pandemics, including a possible rise in HIV/AIDS, already a growing problem in South Asia. Long-term malnutrition is also a mounting danger with the disruption of food cultivation and supply systems.

Each of these issues—and more that will be apparent as social reconstruction continues—must be addressed as the evolution of civil society proceeds. Each NGO will have to evaluate its capacities to meet these new social issues. As these things happen, new, issue-specific groups will most likely arise and other groups will shift their focus, at least in part.