Emergency Food and Medicine for Kolkata's Poorest

On 19th December our team distributed emergency rations to 20 families in crisis. Many lost their livelihoods in the COVID lockdown and have been unable to get back on their feet. Other families are torn apart by domestic abuse, illness or bereavement. Rations are distributed to the female head of the family.

Aklima lives on the street under a flyover in Kolkata, West Bengal. She is fifty years old and a widow. She is supporting three daughters and two sons (aged between 15 and 22 years). She is a ragpicker. She collects solid waste to be able to feed her family. She walks 4 to 6 km to meet daily necessity. She earns three hundred rupees (£3.00 or USD3.60) by spending six hours daily collecting materials such as- plastic items, bottles, tin, iron as well as soft toys. She sells tin and iron at Rs 4 per kg and bottles at Rs 8 per kg. Desperation has forced her to do this work. Security has become a long distant dream. The rags collected by her are sold after two or three days. The work is not regular. The situation forced her to beg as well. Whatever she earns is not sufficient to maintain her family’s daily needs. She is unaware about any kind of Govt. schemes hence, not getting any help from Govt. She does not have Swasthya Sathi (health insurance) card under the West Bengal Govt. scheme. Nor does she have a ration card which would entitle her to food rations.

Aklima badly needs help. On Monday, thanks to your generosity, she received a pack of emergency food rations. Moreover our livelihood team will link her with the various government schemes available to society’s poorest. We will also work with her sons and daughters to find them employment so that they can become independent of their mother.

Each ration pack should last a family of four one month.

10Kg Rice, 5kg wheat flour, 2litres cooking oil, 1 kg salt, 1 kg sugar, 500gm Bengal gram, 500kg semolina, 100gm turmeric, 100 gm chilli powder, 200 gm puffed rice, 1 kg soyabean chunks 

The cost is Rs 1262 for the pack. Your donations directly enable us to rescue these desperate families from the terror of hunger. 

That's USD15.25  or GBP12.57 - to feed a family of 4 for a month.

Thank you

Sakina is only 17 but she has already faced her family’s ruin after her father’s death from kidney failure a year ago. Her mother, Rukshana, became the sole breadwinner for herself and her two daughters by working as a maidservant. This is brutally exploitative work bringing in just 2 – 3000 Rupees a month (£20).  But Rukshana is now also very unwell, suffering terrible stomach pains which prevent her working. In order to feed the family 17 year old Sakina took over her mother’s work. But Sakina wants more from life. She is one of our youngsters who has chosen to remain at school and lift herself out of poverty through education.

Remarkably, she passed her Class X board exam this year, despite the terrible times she is going through.

I was in Kolkata in May and attended a meeting of all the young people from Sakina’s area who attend our Evening Classes.  Our aim was to provide support and encouragement for girls like Sakina by inviting youngsters who have already started university to come and talk about their experiences. One by one the girls and boys stood up and told their stories. Sakina wept as she told the group how she was struggling and afraid she would have to give up on her dream of an education.

On our way home we asked Sakina to take us to visit her Mum. Thin and pale Rukshana lay on a raised platform that is both bed, storage space and table in these one-room slum dwellings. My lovely colleagues Parveen and Sufia leapt into action. They mobilised funds for medical help and rations for the family. Thanks to the generosity of donors like you we are able to provide the temporary help required to get a family like this back on its feet. With your support, Sakina is continuing her education and does not need to travel miles to go and work as a maidservant for miserable wages.  

Much of our emergency relief work is tied to keeping young people in education or training. This is the best way a family can earn a sustainable income and lift itself out of poverty.  Parveen ensured that Sakina was also enrolled in computer classes so that she is building her skills for a better future.

It costs just £30 a month to provide the basic support for a family like Sakina’s.

Sukhjan’s desperate story is not unusual in Kolkata’s slums and squatter camps. Born into a large family in a village outside Kolkata, the first disaster came with the death of her father, the family’s breadwinner. Her mother took the family to Kolkata where they now live in an illegal shelter beside the Topsia canal. Sukhjan’s older brother married her off to an alcoholic drug addict who beat and starved her until  the girl’s mother could bear her daughter’s pain no more and persuaded her to leave the husband’s home and return to her family. By this time she had conceived a son, now 9 years old. 

Sukhjan is illiterate, was married off as a child and works as a maidservant for just Rs2000 per month (£20, USD26).  Her husband continues to visit her, demanding money and abusing her. She borrows money from neighbours to give to him. She called the police once and the husband was jailed for a week but was soon back to his old ways. 

Tiljala SHED’s staff are very concerned about Sukhjan and her son.  We are able to help her by bringing her son into our Education Centres every day after school for academic support as well as to enable us to keep him safe and off the streets. We also provide Sukhjan with material support – dry rations (rice, dal, tea, flour), blankets, tarpaulins (for shelter) and clothes. 

Our long term goal is to keep her son in education and to encourage him to pass his board exams so that he can earn a decent living and look after his mother in future. But in the short term, your generosity means that we can offer her emergency support. 

Thank you as ever for providing some of Kolkata’s most vulnerable people with rays of hope.  All the beneficiaries and all the staff at Tiljala SHED are so grateful that you make this programme possible.  

 About the programme

The Emergency Food and Medicine Programme differs from Tiljala SHED's other activities in that it provides emergency relief to families and individuals in crisis. Our other programmes focus on long term goals of empowerment and development. A committee, run by Parveen our programme co-ordinator, decide how the funds are spent. Sometimes the help is medical - covering expenses for medical treatment and frequently it is about helping a family through difficult times by providing food rations. This programme is vital in helping us to keep our Education Programme on track. When a family falls on hard times (and this has been so much worse during the pandemic) the children are often taken out of school as the expenses associated with schooling (uniforms, books, shoes) can no longer be borne. This may be a short term solution, but it is a disaster in the long term as education and literacy is the absolute best route out of this extreme poverty. So we prioritise the families where there is risk of children dropping out. It is working well and we are proud that we have youngsters completing school and aspiring to higher education.

Sana is about 13 years old. She lives with her parents and two siblings. She is deaf and dumb and has suffered from severe mental and physical disabilities since birth. Her parents, Altaf and Sony, love her dearly and work hard to keep her fed and comfortable. They live in a small one room house in the slum and Altaf works as a rickshaw driver to earn around 300 – 400 rupees a day (£3 - £4). He pays Rs1500 rent per month and Sana’s medication costs them Rs3000 per month. This is a family living on the edge. Last month Sana broke her arms and the subsequent medical bills threw the family into crisis. They approached Tiljala SHED for help. Md Alamgir, Tiljala SHED’s founder, went to visit the family and found them to be a loving and devoted family “The whole family, especially the mother, is devoted to her care only to help her survive with identity and dignity” he wrote to me. As a disabled person Sana is entitled to government support. In order to receive benefits she must have a bank account and to open a bank account she needs an Aadhar Card (an ID card). But to get an Aadhar card she needs to provide biometric information – fingerprints and iris. The family have taken Sana along on several occasions to obtain these but it has proved impossible because of her disabilities.  They now have to seek legal help to ensure Sana can apply for the benefits she needs.

For the ultra-poor and illiterate like Sana’s family, asserting their rights and entitlements can feel like an impossible mountain to climb, but Tiljala SHED is there to help. Our staff are ready to help Sana’s family both by providing temporary food and medical assistance, but also to help her apply for benefits.  The other day I had this report from Md Alamgir “We have visited Sana’s house. We gave her emergency food and medicines and collected all necessary documents required for government benefit.”   This will take time, but meanwhile Tiljala SHED is there to support the family with temporary food and medicine. Thanks to your generosity there is support available to the most vulnerable families in times of crisis.

You can cover the medication costs for a person like Sana for £25 per month

Thank you as ever for your generosity.

This programme was set up in 2015 to provide emergency food rations and medicines for especially vulnerable people in our target areas. 

Almost everyone in the canal side or railway squatter camps of central Kolkata depends on a daily wage from casual factory work, rag picking (collecting, sorting and selling waste), rickshaw driving, fruit and vegetable selling and other informal activities. Few families are able to cope with an emergency like a hospitalisation or other medical expenses. If the main earner in a family dies or becomes unable to earn, the family goes hungry. There is then the temptation to pull children out of education so that they can work.

This programme has provided the interim support for families in crisis. And your generosity has enabled our staff to come to the rescue of hundreds of families and individuals over the years. But we never expected a crisis like COVID 19 - when every single family in our target areas suddenly needed help. In 2020, thanks to the amazing generosity of our donors, we were able to provide food rations to 5000 families in need. And again this spring, when the the delta variant tore through India,  we have been able to do the same.  Another 5000 ration packs have been distributed so far this year.

We have focused particularly on the families whose children are in our education programme - as it is especially important that youngsters stay in education and don’t let the COVID crisis drive them into child labour or into early marriage.

So we want to thank you once again for your generosity and your loyalty to this important cause.