Covid-19 pandemic has hit the life of everyone very hard. Everyone is affected by the pandemic but the people living in resource poor neighbourhood especially daily wage earners are affected the most. Almost all the CSOs are on field trying to support these people in whatever capacity they can. Similarly PUKAR tried to reach out to the people of these hard to reach areas in the city of Mumbai and suburb. PUKAR started with raising awareness through series of posters and videos. In order to help them with food security we decided to appeal our generous supporters to raise funds. We have covered the areas like Kaula Bandar, Kolsa Bandar, Kali Reti Bandar, Dargah Galli, Pardhi Wada, Jay Bhim Nagar, Cheeta Camp, Karbala Chawl, Janta Nagar, Indira Nagar, Shivaji Nagar, tribal areas in Palghar and many more. We are happy to share that 45000 people have been supported by distributing ration.
Team PUKAR faced so many challenges during the work especially with the procurement and transportation of grains. It was very hard to get ration on right price and then transport it to the areas where the actual distribution took place. The shopkeepers were not ready to negotiate on the price and accept payment through bank transfer. The team faced other adversities like police, fasting during Ramzaan month in the initial period, scorching heat and issues of crowd control. In order to do crowd control the BRs conducted a census of all the households (HH) they worked with so that no HH was excluded from the support. They faced the risk of being contracted by the virus while distributing the ration to the people even though they have ensured all the security measures like covering the face by a mask, ensuring social distancing, sanitizing hands etc. PUKAR salutes its team for risking their lives and executing the relief work despite all these challenges.
PUKAR is grateful to Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives, India Development Service, Shabnum and Sunil Sanghvi Charitable Gift Trust, Stichting Daida Foundation, Globescan Incorporated, Professor Anup Malani, Mr. Shirish Shah and Ms. Swapna Shah and all the other people for their invaluable support to PUKAR enabling us to help these many people.
