Widowed at the age of 23, Revathi had gathered the pieces of her life to look after her 3 children. With a small tea shop that she had set up in a slum, she could barely manage to feed her kids. Fate dealt her a further blow as due to Covid-19 lockdown, that shop had to close down. Like her, all unskilled workers and small time sellers have also lost their jobs. As Covid19 strikes India, Prajna Foundation has now turned its attention to saving this most vulnerable section of the society.
Water is scarce and community toilets are not so clean. Average 5 persons live in a small room of 50 Sq Ft (4.6 Sq Meter). Food for survival takes priority over soaps and sanitizers. Social distancing is next to impossible. The health hazards of the urban slum dwellers are directly related to poverty. They are more prone to communicable diseases and malnutrition. Consequently, an outbreak of COVID-19 here can spell disaster.
Following the advisory of WHO on Covid-19 emergency, Prajna Foundation is educating the slum dwellers as per their guidelines. The foundation is striving to provide Safety Kits with soaps, hand sanitizers and air-masks to 5,000 slum dwellers in Delhi. Dry Ration is being given to those families who have nothing to eat.
In addition to the prevention of community transmission of COVID-19, the project will have a long term impact by inculcating good hygiene as part of the daily routine of the slum dwellers. This in turn will drastically reduce the number of days they need to take off from work as almost 70% of their absence is due to ill health or sickness in the family. Since most of them are daily wage earners, this will have a direct positive bearing on their income levels in future as well.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
