Meet India's COVID-19 Crusaders!

As the world is staggering under what is arguably the worst crisis of our times, there are some superheroes who have been working selflessly to help—putting their own lives in jeopardy to be able to reach out to the most vulnerable and distressed sections. Here are some of those inspirational volunteers...

- Humra Afroz Khan

Goonj

The nonprofit undertakes disaster relief, humanitarian aid, and community development in 25 states across the country. With the outbreak of the current crisis, Goonj’s teams have been tirelessly ensuring help reaches all—over 27,600 families have been given immediate relief, under their Rahat COVID-19 initiative. The organisation has also been running (and supporting) multiple community kitchens, and has supplied more than 16,600 kilos of ration and 80,000 ready-to-eat meals to migrant labourers and daily wagers, among other efforts. They have also been distributing masks and cloth sanitary pads—produced at their processing centres, thus, also generating employment for the underprivileged.

Goonj is especially focused on the many marginalised communities such as sex workers, transgenders, tribal population, HIV-positive people, tea garden workers, leprosy patients, and devdasis, especially in the rural areas. “Ironically, today, labourers who made our houses are homeless. And farmers who have provided us food are starving. But the plight of the people ignored within the marginalised communities is even worse! Because of their backgrounds, they are being ostracised almost as a compulsion! It was crucial to reach out to them at the earliest,” Founder Anshu Gupta tells Cosmo. “These communities were already down in the dumps, but now they are at the bottom of the pit. And have no way of coming out of it any time soon.”

An important part of the NGO’s work includes planning a long-term rehabilitation solutions. Anshu elaborates, “We are thinking of a strategy to involve the women in some kind of economic activity, like making masks from home; or the labourers who have lost their jobs in any kind of plantation. We should have something concrete soon.”

Kashtakari Panchayat