Children like Radharani saw everything destroyed in the cyclone and the heavy rainfall that followed. The roof of her house was blown away, the mud walls collapsed. She along with her parents, took shelter at her uncle's place for one week - as the saline water took time to recede.

'Before leaving the house, I remember we ran here and there to take the valuables with us. But we could not manage to take everything. When we returned we saw there was nothing.'

Poehlman said the attendance of children was noticeably low and the onset of monsoon and weak embankments were adding to the calamity in schools as they were causing water-logging in many pockets.

'We need to build an environment so that students attend their classes and the authorities also resume the process of normal schooling in cyclone-hit areas. The School-in-a-Box will only help support the noble initiative to bring Aila-hit students back to school,' said Poehlman.

Unicef is also supplying 60 tents that can serve as makeshift schools in affected areas.

'The Sunderbans is extremely vulnerable in terms of natural calamities. So if we can build certain preparedness now, it'll help the people of the island in the days to come,' she said.

'This apart, if we can encourage students and bring them back to school, it will help prevent social menaces like child labour and child trafficking issues.'

Thousands of people in the districts of South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas have lost their livelihoods due to Aila. The saline water that inundated most of the villages after the cyclone has destroyed agricultural land.

The maximum damage took place in islands like Gosaba, Basanti, Patharpratima, Hingalganj, Sagar and Sandeshkhali. Over 920,000 houses were damaged in the cyclone, the majority of them in the Sunderbans.

(Soudhriti Bhabani can be contacted at soudhriti.b@ians.in)