Ms. Zoe and Ms. Verena have been working at Community Seva Center since September 2016. Ms. Zoe and Ms. Verena came  along for  village visits  and  to  get  to  know  the  people of the community.

Nowadays, both  Ms  Zoe and Ms. Verena are  assisting the Staff of Community Seva Center in their daily work by writing accounts for Women’s Self Help Groups, playing with the children in the Crèche Centres and giving Health Education talks to the children and mothers about Nutrition, Personal Hygiene, Hand Wash,  Menstrual Health, Self Hygiene and Reproductive Child Health (RCH) etc. While doing this, they get into contact with new people, mostly in the villages of Nonankuppam, Pooranankuppam and Pudukuppam.

Ms. Zoe and Ms. Verena have developed a good social relationship with the people and work very well with their peers. They are received like family members and have a very good reception by the public.  They respect the culture of the Tamil people and like the Tamil people’s dress and food. They also taught spoken English for the village children and conducted several awareness meetings. In the company of Mrs. Padma, Ms. Zoe and Ms. Verena were able to get to know many families in the nearby villages of Pondicherry. Working on the accounts for SHGs, they came to know the hospitality of many women. Some of them even knew English and therefore it was possible to communicate easily with them. It was very interesting to get to know a little bit about their life circumstances, as some of them have been married since the age of 14.

In the past 6 months, Ms. Zoe and Ms. Verena had the honor to attend some public traditional functions. The inter-cultural learning experience was very good for them. As they knew the family from previous visits in the villages, it was even more interesting for them to attend. Ms. Zoe and Ms. Verena got to spend one of the first weekends in Pondicherry, in a TOT Training. Many important speakers came to give the training in Tamil, to over 30 women. On holidays, Ms. Zoe and Ms. Verena visited Indian historical places and traditional events in the company of Mrs. Padma.  Ms. Zoe and Ms. Verena got the chance to go to the village temple of Pooranakuppam. They came to know the religious rituals of Hindus and were even able to take part. It was very interesting to learn more about that part of Indian culture. As they were working on accounting for SHGs, they also were able to worship in the private homes of SHG members. The women even gave them bindis and bangles to wear, since it is part of their culture. They were eager to learn the Tamil language and now they know all the basic Tamil letters, words and paragraphs to read and write.