COVID Relief Work By Swanirwar and Bhagavatula Charitable Trust (BCT) -Account By Asha Devi

Inclusive Collaboration

Swanirvar, Vibha’s on-ground partner in Baduria, West Bengal started their on ground work on COVID response in full swing after the West Bengal’s election results were declared on 2nd May, 2021. The first step was to meet with the Basirhat district officials who had  the Swanirwar staff attend a high level meeting on COVID management. Beside the awareness campaign on COVID, it was decided in the meeting that 10 staff members will be employed in the Basirhat District Hospital for smooth and proper COVID management. For this purpose, partial funding is being provided by the government where special uniforms have also been made available to the staff. The staff will collect and record COVID test data everyday and update the panchayat about it, mainly in Hingalganj, Sandeshkhali and other Sundarban areas.

Swanirvar also came up with a plan to employ 6 of Swanirvar staff members in the government hospital as volunteers who will help the hospital staff in performing COVID tests for the migrants. On the 5^th may itself the volunteers helped about 134 migrants with RT-PCR tests and helped the hospital staff to maintain smooth operations during testing. 

To function efficiently, Swanirvar has also become the representative of Baduria police station. The police staff and the sub inspector of police, Mr Bairagi, have been closely working and supporting Swanirvar in the campaign as well as identifying migrants and brick-kiln children. In addition to this, Swanirvar is now working closely with Deganga and Baduria Rural Hospitals as well, where as “Rogi Sahayaks (Patient helpers)”, they will be helping patients and their relatives, by making them aware of the COVID infection, teaching them importance of social distancing and thereby helping them in tests, hospitals admission as well as isolation when needed.

[Note: Swanirvar mainly works to enhance the education system through various training and workshops for teachers, parents and children from government schools as well as other NGO schools. For pre-primary level training, anganwadi supervisors and resource teachers will also get involved in their yearly planning along with organizing various workshops. Vibha has been supporting Swanirvar’s teachers training program since 2006.]

Spreading Awareness Through The Most Active Citizens

BCT (Bhagavatula Charitable Trust) is our on-ground partner who has been implementing Sikshana’s “Prerana model” in Vizag  (Andhra Pradesh).  In the current COVID crisis, BCT has been working hard to raise awareness among the local communities, working hard to ensure children’s education does not stop because of the pandemic. There is one mentor per each of the 11 tribal mandals (7 mandals to a taluq) to implement this work. At present, each mentor is going to villages and raising COVID awareness. If there is a school in the vicinity, the mentors would also gather children and their parents and talk with them about precautions they should be taking to prevent getting the COVID-19 infection as well as stoping its spread. The BCT volunteers have been also working towards assessing needs for medicines and medical equipment in Public Health Centers (PHC) as well as Community Health Centers (CHC). So far they have collected assessment data from about 107 PHCs and CHCs.