Help Needy in Remote Villages in India Fight COVID

The world is still battling the direct & indirect effects of the pandemic and the impact has been disruptive across the globe. In India, the pandemic has destroyed both lives and livelihoods, and rural India has been hit the worst. 85-year old Bhuribai who lives in a remote village in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh is one of the thousands of people affected by the pandemic.

Bhuribai is a widow and has two sons who migrated to Gujarat state in search of better employment opportunities. Her only source of income was selling vegetables in a nearby town that she grew in her backyard. The meagre money she made from that was enough for a meal per day. When the pandemic hit India, the government announced a nation-wide lockdown and Bhuribai was restricted within her village. With her financial crisis at its peak, her son also returned to the village along with his family due to a lack of daily-wage work. Bhuribai now was responsible to feed 4 more people and there was not even a single grain in her house.

As they lacked education, none of her family members were able to gather information regarding the various relief schemes offered by the Government. Educate Girls works with underprivileged families like Bhuribai’s across Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh in India.

Educate Girls used an analytical approach to identify 1,000+ villages which were in dire need of additional support. These villages showed a high concentration of out-of-school-children (OOSC) and the supply of essentials like groceries, medical supplies, etc. was barely trickling down to these settlements.

Once identified, Educate Girls distributed Welfare Kits which included flour, sugar, salt, soya bean, chickpea lentils, red gram, refined oil, red chilli powder, turmeric, coriander powder, and soaps for washing clothes and bathing. The kits were distributed among the households identified where the families who weren't included under the public schemes due to lack of documentation and hence could not avail the Government's schemes for COVID-19.

Educate Girls’ Field Coordinator Nahtia and Team Balika (community volunteer) Kamlesh, with the help of local authorities, prepared a list of the most underprivileged families in the village, where Bhuribai's family appeared on top. Educate Girls distributed ration kits to 148 other families in her village.

“The situation had been terrible in these times. We have worked hard all our lives just to earn one meal but this uncertain pandemic has brought a halt in our lives. I will be ever grateful to Educate Girls for helping us put some food on our plates” asserts Bhuribai on receiving the ration kit.