Annie George knows the issues.

She is the Chief Executive Officer of the NGO Coordination and Resource Centre. It is based in Nagapattinam, near the ocean that wreaked its greatest havoc of all the places situated along mainland India 's southern coastline.

She is a self-assured Indian woman from the southern state of Kerala. But in handing out her business card, she says jokingly that she needs more reassurance, so her email address repeats itself with annnie.anniegeorge.

Annie came to the coordination centre during the feverish days of relief distribution, at a time when there were many agencies bringing their donations and goodwill. But as often happens after an emergency, there is less than optimal coordination.

“At that time, coordination was essential,” Annie says. “But now there is a shift. Many of the early agencies have gone home, and those remaining for the long term are seeing the need of this centre to be more of a resource centre, where they can come to share thoughts and concerns of their sectoral work.”

So there are some agencies that are especially interested in housing construction, or fishing livelihood, or advocacy issues.

Annie describes some of the advocacy issues. “One that we lost was a tough one to advocate. We cautioned against filling the sea with too many fishing boats in order not to deplete the fishing supply. But that was a hard sell, because people could easily accuse us of being against the fisherfolk. And we lost that battle. Today there are more boats on the water than before the tsunami.”

On other issues there was more unanimity among the NGOs. A chief one was that housing should not be constructed so far away from the ocean as the government had first proposed. Fisherfolk want to be near their boats, motors, nets and livelihood. Of course, the danger might be that houses built as close to the shore as earlier could once again be wiped out by another tsunami. A compromise was reached with the government, one that combines the need for both proximity and safety.

Lutheran World Relief's principal partners in tsunami recovery make tracks to the Centre. CASA, short for Church's Auxiliary for Social Action, is one of the agencies that regularly attends meetings here along with other NGOs. As a large agency with much experience in emergencies, CASA has much to offer. And at the same time, it gets much in return. The United Evangelical Lutheran Church in India and Lutheran World Service India also keep in contact with this Centre.

The Coordination Centre is a good meeting place for donors, implementing agencies and field workers. Here ideas and information are exchanged. Sometimes new alliances are built and networks are created.

Sometimes the exchange comes with simple things, such as simply as the passing along a business card. And if you get a card bearing the name annie.anniegeorge, you will have access to a lot of good information about the work and issues facing agencies at work in tsunami recovery today.

And that's also reassuring!

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*Thiemann is a former LWR Program Director for Asia and the Middle East. He served for six months as LWR’s Tsunami Consultant in India.

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