Day 12 - June 6 - Building Relationships Brick by Brick

With the foundation complete, we have seen a lot of progress. The first three foot section of wall has been laid!

Additionally, Mr. Albert (Packianathapuram's village leader) visited the site today and gave some feedback on the quality of construction, which he approved of. Later in the day, a meeting was held at the CASA center we're staying at to discuss the building project with leaders from surrounding villages. In India, local government follows a hierarchy: 1. Local 2. Block 3. District A village (Packianathapuram, for example) makes up the local level; a block is a collection of villages; a district is a collection of blocks. We designed our center to be used by the block that Packianathapuram is a part of, which includes two other nearby villages: Thoothakudi (2 km away) and Maruthakulam (3 km away).

Male village leaders from all three villages and leaders from the women's group in Packianathapuram attended the meeting and described the services and resources they hope to have at the center. It's very encouraging to see the breadth of people our project has the potential to impact.

Overall, it was a fairly productive day. If all goes well, we'll have the brickwork up to lintel level (the top of the door frames) done by Friday!

- Kiera