Covid Relief
The outbreak of corona virus disease (COVID-19) has been declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) and the virus has now spread in too many countries. The wide-spread and incomparably huge attempt during the lockdown period certainly proved to be effective in holding down the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. We are learning more about how COVID-19 affects people every day socially, financially and mentally. While it is important for COVID-19 continues to take action to prevent further transmission, reduce the impacts of the outbreak, and support relief measures.
India imposed a nationwide lockdown and asked its citizens to stay home and practice social distancing. It was imposed to stop the imminent spread of the novel corona virus. But for the majority of Indians, social distancing is impossible. Many face hunger and starvation in absence of daily wages that have been disrupted as the world’s seventh-largest economy grinds to a halt. Thousands of migrant workers and daily wagers have been left jobless in the wake of the current state of lockdown. The COVID-19 pandemic in Delhi has affected thousands of daily wage earners, construction workers and homeless. NGO Sofia has taken an initiative to help the unprivileged families with its more than 200 volunteers who have government-issued curfew passes to provide necessary groceries to the people living in Delhi especially North-East Delhi who are adversely affected by the conditions prevailed due to the massive spread of corona all over Delhi.
Sofia Educational & Welfare Society with the support of Tech Mahindra Foundation, Hamdard National Foundation, BSES, Tata Power and IGSSS provided support to these affected people. Our esteemed partners showed great enterprise and tried to ease the distress of marginalized individuals during lockdown by providing relief material to the needy families. We worked relentlessly towards providing dry ration kits, financial support, cooked meals, hygiene kits, livelihood through masks stitching to underprivileged people.
The volunteers reached out to the communities and took every necessary attempt to ensure that the deprived ones are not left out. They are also creating awareness on maintaining social distance and preventing the spread to coronavirus in the community by wearing protective gears such as mask, gloves. They are also being advised to use hand sanitizer or soap to keep their hands clean.
Upon hearing the relief work, the needy people themselves approached our centres to collect the relief material. We distributed dry ration kits which contained rice, aata, rajma, chana dal, refined oil, tea packet, sugar, salt and soap to more than 48000 needy people with the support of Tech Mahindra Foundation, Hamdard National Foundation, Goonj and IGSSS.
We had also provided ration to needy people by door to door service for those who couldn’t reach to our office. Our volunteers took every necessary hygiene precautions and used gloves, face masks and hand sanitizers during the ration distribution.
Our Major activities :
- Ration Distribution to women, Disabled people and Needy families.
- Hygiene & Utility Kit distribution. Distribution of Cooked Meal to migrants, covid patients and Covid caregivers
- Masks & Sanitizer Distribution
- Installation of Sanitizer Machines
- Financial assistance to women and poor families
- Providing Medical assistance to Covid Patients such as Oxygen Cylinders, Concentrators etc.
- Providing livelihood through masks stitching
- Vaccination drive & awareness program
As a special initiative on the occasion of EID, we provided 1300 special kits to needy families who were unable to celebrate festival. The kits contained Aata, Sewaiyan, Rice, Dry Fruits, Daal, Sugar.
It was going through under proper management of the distribution committee as the community size is large. The volunteers also collected data to show the date wise distribute of ration.
During our journey, we got support from police officials, District Administration officials, IAS Officers, Social Workers, Community Leaders and volunteers to reach out needy persons. Hence, we issued “Corona Warriors Certificates” to all of them. This initiative was taken to motivate, accelerate their spirit and commitment toward working for us 24×7 in pandemic situation.
Keeping in view of COVID 19 pandemic spread, we observed that there was need of masks for underprivileged people and sanitizer dispenser machine at shelter homes, though apart from ration and financial support to needy people, we also distributed approx. 1.5 Lakh masks to underprivileged people within community and also supplied approx. 3 Lakh masks to many companies and NGOs such as Action Aid, BSES, Tech Mahindra etc for distribution at mass level. We got stitched these masks by underprivileged people to connect them with livelihood.
Apart from this, Sofia in association with our esteemed partners provided financial assistance to more than 1130 beneficiaries for their day to day expenses.
