Jayapriya Grama Valarchi Foundation

So, we are located over on Lazarus Church Road in Mandavellipakkam. The building is an older one, New No. 30 but some people still look for Old No. 44. It gets confusing for delivery drivers sometimes. We’ve been in this part of Chennai for a good bit now. Mandavellipakkam has a specific feel to it, very residential and lived-in. Our work focuses on village development, even though our main office is here in the city. We spend a lot of time on the phone or planning trips out to the rural areas. The office itself is pretty crowded with files and boxes of materials we need for the projects. We don’t have fancy air conditioning in every room, so we use fans a lot. It’s a bit cramped when everyone is in at the same time. We usually have tea together in the afternoon around three. The stairs in the building are a bit narrow and you have to be careful coming up. We know most of the people who live on this street and say hello in the mornings. It’s a busy area but we find our way through the day. We don't put on any airs about what we do. It’s just work that needs to be finished. We have a lot of paperwork because of the nature of the foundation, so we're always filing something or looking for a lost folder. It keeps us busy from morning until evening. Sometimes the power goes out, but we just wait it out and talk for a bit.