Sanitation and Clean Water for 60 Dalit Families

In the midst of this humanitarian disaster in India, Nandri continues to support our families and share vital food aid to the local villages.  One of our life saving initiatives is educating our families on how to stay safe. Handwashing and social distancing Is extremely challenging when families live together in close confines with no running water in their houses, no toilet facilities and just a communal water pump where they can fetch water every day.  Families collect water in a bucket to wash themselves and also to cook and clean. We implemented an education programme for the mothers and their children to explain the importance of adhering to the hygiene guidelines in order to keep safe.  It has been extremely successful and to date only a  couple of our families have contracted the virus and thankfully have recovered.  this pandemic has highlighted the importance of proper sanitation and hygiene facilities for our rural families.  

India was the 3rd nation to hit the unenviable milestone of 1 million cases of COVID19 after USA and Brazil. The United Nations Aid chief has said that the support to poor countries has been grossly inadequate and urged the G20 to increase the aid or to suffer the devastating consequences in the future. Certain regions have had to reimpose restrictions to curb the spread of the virus and worryingly for Nandri, there has been an increase in spread in rural areas.  As a result of the rapid spread of the virus, Tamil Nadu has reimposed lockdown restrictions, resulting in further financial hardship for our people. Per capita spending on Healthcare in India is among the lowest in the world and already Indias hospitals are struggling. The situation in India is at crisis level.

RIght now our main focus is supporting our families financially and through education on hygiene and social distance in order to survive the pandemic. They have no income as the daily wage earners are not allowed to work. they have no money to buy food.  We are continuing to distribute vital aid to all our Nandri families. The last couple of months we distributed life saving food parcels to many of our local villages where families are struggling to survive. 

Our families know we are there for them to help them survive this catastrophe. We thank you, all or our donors, for giving us the ability to help them. we could not do it without you. On behalf of our families, a big Nandri from us to you all.

Never has there been a more important time for proper sanitation and good hygiene than now, with the threat of the COVID19 virus looming over our Nandri families. We have made great progress with building proper sanitation for individual families and teaching them how vital good hygiene practice is for their health but the truth is a toilet is still a rarity in poor areas of rural India. Infact none of our families have running water in their homes.  Water is collected and stored in pots for washing hands and utensils. Particularly now education in hygiene practices is absolutely essential for our families. This virus is extremely contagious so we have as a matter of urgency instigated a special COVID19 education programme for all our mothers and their families.  We emphasize the importance of hand washing in clean water and of social distancing and wearing masks to prevent spread. This disease is new to us all and it is so important that our families are informed in how to prevent contracting it. One of our new projects is the mothers groups are making masks for their families to wear to prevent them from spreading the virus.

 All our Nandri families are being severely financially impacted by the 21 day lockdown and will be in great danger when the Covid Virus hits their villages. They live in very rural areas with little or no medical care and we have seen cities like New York with top rate health care brought to its knees by the number of people very ill and losing their lives. The Indian Government is giving some support but it will not be enough for our families to survive 21 days without work or income. Nandri is there to help and support our mothers and families through this desperate time. We will support our families financially. Just 1000 rupees (12 euros) per month to each of our mothers will help them survive this unprecedented pandemic. 

COVID19 is devastating countries both rich and poor but the effect that it will have on our poorer countries is unimaginable. We have seen wealthy Nations with modern sanitation and sophisticated health care buckling under this virus. India has a population of 1.3 Billion, of which 360 million live in poverty with little or no sanitation.  This virus does not discriminate on who it infects but the poor are so much more vulnerable. Nandri has already transformed the lives of over 5000 poor Dalit mothers and their families and through out this pandemic we will do everything in our power to protect, support and see our vulnerable families through this desperate time.

We want to thank you, our donors who make it possible for Nandri to do this vital work of providing sanitation and clean water for our families. We will be working extremely hard to improve the conditions our families live in especially In this extraordinary and very frightening time. If you can donate and help us to help our families, we would be extremely grateful.  We have also set up a special COVID19 fundraising project on GlobalGiving which is linked below. As Nandri means thanks in the Tamil language we would like to say a big “NANDRI” to all our wonderful donors.

Links:

• https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/covid-19-emergency-fund-for-poor-dalit-families/