Community Support Network

Location: Gurugam (India)

No one had expected that our world would turn upside down the way it did. I was in the middle of a very important academic year and was putting all my energies on the new session my school was just going to start and that's when it started to wreak havoc in our world. We live in Gurgaon (India) which is a new city and has construction going around and a lot of migrant workers from other Indian states come to work here. These are usually daily laborers or maids and for them getting paid everyday/weekly is what sustains them in this expensive city. While I was in my comfortable cocoon of online classes and my parents at home and was thinking how it changed my world, the news started showing the horrifying face of how it was affecting them more than anyone. Suddenly a lot of daily laborers lost their daily earning and along with that eventually, food scarcity started happening. Here we were cooking exotic dishes and enjoying Netflix and a certain segment which helps us do our jobs peacefully were out of food and jobs and their children were maybe going hungry. That's when I realized that sitting idly by waiting for the worst to come it's better to do something or find solutions to address the socio-economic impact of the pandemic on our local community.

Two years ago I started the CanUsupport initiative where we link the NGO's in our local community with real genuine people and families who want or can help people from economically weaker sections of society. I support a few learning centers of underprivileged kids and started our effort from there. The challenge of course remained how as we were in lockdown and were not able to reach them physically. We attempted to run two drives as follows :

1. Food Drive COVID - We at CanUSupport decided to take up the initiative of feeding the families (mostly daily laborers and maids ) of one of the learning centers for underprivileged children and their parents along with few other nearby local villages who we supported by collecting funds/ ration for them to survive during the unseen crisis. We were able to support families of 32 daily laborers and provided them a month’s worth of food.

2. Mask Employment drive - As the coronavirus cases were increasing in India each day, and each day was becoming worse than the previous one, the need for precautions was increasing side by side and in no time, masks became a necessary requirement for all of us. With this, millions of people in India, in fact, in Gurugram alone, were affected by the lockdown introduced in March. We saw various tailors losing their source of income as the lockdown was implemented. Their business came to a complete standstill because of minimal or no customer interaction. Unfortunately, they were one group of people who were the most vulnerable to the lockdown’s effects. This encouraged us to tackle both the problems - producing masks and providing employment to the tailors of my city. The initiative involved the production of handmade cloth masks made by tailors of the local Bastis and villages in Gurugram, providing livelihood opportunities to the tailors in these challenging times along with protection for many more lives. Our vision with the mask distribution project is that we want as many societies, condominiums and organizations to buy these masks, and distribute them to their essential services employees i.e guards, house workers, Malis, and other workers who don’t have the funds to buy masks for themselves, and replace them on a regular basis. For every mask that will be brought this way, the tailors of the local villages in Gurugram will earn some amount of profit, which will benefit them in the times of this crisis. We are also seeking help for fundraising and donations (to buy fabric and handle the logistics). We currently have a capacity to produce 2000 masks a week and can increase it in case there is a requirement.

Support

Our initiative aims to make sure the migrant workers who want to go back home are safe and fed. Also, the people who are left behind should be able to find employment to be able to survive. Another initiative we want to take is providing smartphones and tablets to underprivileged students so they can continue with their education.

Other Needs: Volunteers, reach out to leaders of mobile companies

See more: https://www.facebook.com/canusupport/?modal=admin_todo_tour

For more information contact covid19@unmgcy.org