Sivabanu Valarnidhi Foundation

Our foundation is based at 12B on Rukmani Street. We are over in Jai Balaji Nagar, which is part of Nesapakkam in Chennai. The pin code is 600078. It is a residential area, so it feels very much like a home. We work out of a small space that used to be a regular house. There is a small garden in the front that we try to keep tidy, though the weeds usually win. Inside, we have a couple of rooms where we handle all our foundation business. We aren't a big fancy operation. We don't have suits or formal meetings. Most of us just wear our everyday clothes and get to work. We deal with a lot of local stuff, helping out people in the neighborhood when they run into trouble. The street is narrow, so parking can be a bit of a headache. We usually tell people to come by walk if they can. The neighbors are friendly and we often share news over the wall. It’s a quiet life most of the time. We spend a lot of hours at our desks, but we make sure to take a break when the sun is too hot. We’ve been here for a while and the building has some character, like the creaky door. We don't mind the small things. We usually have a small radio playing in the background to keep things from being too quiet while we work.