Asha Trust - Chennai COVID-19 Relief

Project Brief: Sudden Lockdown across India, underprivileged people have been affected severely.
Project Type: Relief & Rehabilitation (description)
Primary Focus: emergencies (description)

Secondary Focus: health and cleanliness

Area: Rural
Supporting Chapter Contact: Chennai
Status: current / ongoing
Project Steward: Rajaraman Krishnan
Project Partner(s): Bhaskar Venkateswaran
Other Contacts: Paripooranam K
Project Address: , Asha Chennai First Floor, 85/2 Luz Avenue Mylapore, Chennai ,,Chennai,
TAMIL NADU  600004
Tel: 94444-04060
Stewarding Chapter: Chennai
Jul 2021ChennaiUSD 1308
Jul 2020ChennaiUSD 3129
May 2020ChennaiINR 9000

Total = $4633.2

Since the time that the Indian Government Announced a sudden lockdown across India in March 2020, underprivileged people have been affected severely. We have been becoming aware of several households that require support in the villages where we work. The worst affected families are often run by older women and also by single mothers in many cases and a majority of the families were from the Dalit community. Also these families were landless and depended on Farm labour and road laying jobs for daily sustenance. Since our teachers are often part of the same village they had a fair knowledge of the affected families. Having worked with the children from these families in the schools we have a fair idea of the condition of the families which helps us identify the truly needy. We are hoping to undertake activities to supply relief materials, esp. food/provisions to these identified families in some villages where we work.

We extended the relief work to two sets of beneficiaries in May of 2020. The first is the Indra Nagar Gypsy (Nari Kuravas in Tamil) community in Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai. Asha Chennai has been working with the children in these communities for a long time through Project Manigal and we received requests from the people here for some relief during the lockdown. The other set are the families of the students whom we support through our Scholarships project.
We share the same basic goal of education but our focus may differ from chapter to chapter. Thus Asha-Chennai may emphasize improving government schools whereas some other chapter may emphasize health education.
Asha Chennai took root in 2002 as a separate chapter. Asha-Chennai has grown since then to include more than 15 highly committed volunteers. Unlike other Asha for Education chapters, we execute the projects ourselves. We are actively executing about 10 projects which together support more than 80 schools, and provide scholarships for over 100 students. We have been raising funds for these from individual donations, donations from corporations and organisations as well as from other Asha chapters.