Over the past week, 200 ration packs have been distributed to the poor and needy of the Kotdwara slums, and to make things even more challenging, much of this was done during a torrential monsoon storm. To make this happen we were delighted to partner with Adelaide radio station SAFM’s Bec, Cosi & Lehmo ‘the Morning Crew’ who asked 250 of their listeners to donate $50 each. It’s incredible that our target of 250 ration packs were sold in one and a half hours! Each pack included rice, dal, flour, oil, salt, spices and bananas. This is enough food to feed a family of six people for approximately one month. That’s somewhere between 35 000 and 50 000 individual meals depending on how many people are in the family, and how often they eat across the day.
One of our goals this week was to connect names with faces …people’s hearts and hands extending from Australia to India, all on the same day. If you look closely at the photos you will see the individual names of individual radio listeners from Adelaide. Thank you SAFM two hundred and fifty times over! Welcome to the Project Help India story. We are all in this together!
On our list for this coming week
Tomorrow (Monday 24 May) our remarkable team in Kotdwara will deliver the remaining 50 ration packs, as donated by SAFM listeners.
This week we will continue to feed many more people. We have a long list of others who need a meal, as for many their daily income has stopped due to the lockdown. Therefore, they have no money to buy food and their hunger grows as the days roll on. We are confident that our budget will stretch to these people thanks to the generosity of many of our Australian friends and supporters.
This week we are also hoping to make some goodie bags for each of the 345 local Kotdwara police as a gesture of thanks and support for all they are doing in the community. As an NGO we believe that it is important to care for the front-line workers. These men and women are working tirelessly in the midst of fear, stress and challenging conditions. We want to lift their spirits
There have been mixed reports about whether the rise of COVID is increasing or decreasing in India. What you hear actually depends on the news story and political agendas. It would seem that the lockdown in the big cities like Mumbai and New Delhi has been somewhat effective but there is a long way to go. What we do know is that in rural India the needs are huge and overwhelming.
We thank our supporters for your kindness and generosity. Your donations have speedily been directed to people in need. Together we are saving lives and bringing hope and love to some very desperate circumstances.