Chudar COVID-19 Relief Update # 6

Slowly as the lock-down restrictions have been relaxed in some parts of the country, Tamilnadu especially Chennai, is still reeling under the spurt of COVID -19 cases.

Keeping up with its relief work, Chudar has identified the need to focus on Integrated relief in the locations where Chudar has been working to help all the people in the community in one way or the other.

Key components of Integrated Relief:

Relief for the poorest

Immediate relief by way of grocery and sanitary kits have been distributed to the poorest families in 15 locations: Guindy, Godhamedu, ICF, Kotturpuram, Mylapore, Mandaveli, Teynampet, Saidapet, Triplicane, Adambakkam, NGO colony and villages in Chengalpet and Thiruvannamalai

380 families reached in the above-mentioned areas. 4000 masks made and 3500 distributed in the community.

Sanitation and Health workers have been working round the clock to ensure that our cities and neighbourhoods are clean and sanitized. As an acknowledgement to their selfless service Chudar has reached out to them as well.

Kathiresan our local volunteer from Thiruvannamalai, Valli from Mylapore and Nivedha from Saidapet, distributed masks, sanitation kits and essential groceries to Government sanitation employees in their respective locations

Mask Making as a livelihood
In addition to providing relief kits and masks, Chudar has also been able to effectively engage the community, providing them with a means of income by way of making reusable cloth masks and distributing it within the community itself

Education for children in the community
The Chudar team felt that the children in the community should also be engaged in a meaningful way so that they do not miss out on the opportunity of learning new things as well as recollecting what they have learnt thereby utilizing their time usefully during the lock-down period.

Shanti lives in Mylapore with her husband who used to work as security personnel. Three months ago, a surgery left him unfit to continue the job and the responsibility of taking care of his medical expenses and running the family fell on Shanti’s shoulders. Shanti had learnt to tailor but did not have a steady income. She expressed her interest in helping the community and since then has been engaged in stitching cloth masks for the people. She found that the use of elastic instead of cloth- tie-ups were more effective and easy to use. She quickly made a 100 of them with this new design and distributed it to some families and obtained their feedback. The families welcomed this move and soon she made around 1000 masks, some of which have been distributed to many small vegetable vendors in the locality, by Valli our Mylapore volunteer.

Manju, our tutor at the Kotturpuram centre conducted classes for the children through whatsapp video calls. She conducted Science, Math and English classes for children in batches where 3-4 children would be present in a batch. The 30 minute class comprised of sharing videos in a particular subject and asking questions based on the video. The children were very excited to connect over whatsapp and interact with their friends. One student Priyadarshini sent back a voice clip saying that she tried out one of the experiments along with her brother and found it very interesting. Many children said that they missed coming to the centre but these classes helped them revise what they had learnt earlier and loved answering the questions. Many were very eager to get their answers corrected as soon as they sent them to Manju.