Saath Charitable Trust

Making a difference, being the change

How do civil society organizations respond to social and livelihood crises? It is a matter of boiling
down to the essentials such as food and other aid?

Amidst the pandemic of Coronavirus, there is a lack of awareness, accurate factual information and
proper guidance for precautionary and preventive measures in underprivileged communities and with
authorities shutting down key institutions nationally, sputtering economy hurts the most vulnerable and
leaves the daily wage earner with no livelihood.

In order to combat this crisis, Saath Charitable Trust, set foot in solidarity with the needy and other
organizations that are similarly helping these affected communities. A round-up of the past two months of
activities that intend rays of hope for the critically affected communities during the COVID-19 lockdown
scenario is as below:

SAATH Team Size was of 4 official people (covered under AMC), and more than 20 SAATH
functionaries were supporting the distribution drive. Safety precautions taken by Saath Team were:

 SAATH had pre-approved the confirmation from the AMC for distribution drive.
 While receiving the materials also, stock was properly placed in stacks and listed down properly
to meet the need of the families and share the same with the supporters.
 During the packaging of the ration kits, all the workers were given Masks and Gloves to ensure
that the hygiene is maintained and also social distancing was conducted during the packaging.
 During the distribution drive, SAATH team ensured to have proper social distancing and ensuring
that Masks and Gloves were worn while distributing Kits.
 Instructions were also given to the families who were at the receiving end to maintain the
distance.

So far, 3500+ Ration Kits have been distributed across Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Palanpur, and
Varanasi which has provided relief to the families for at least 3 weeks. Ration Kits to TB Patients
and an initiative to distribute 15000 Sanitary Napkins in association with Sparkle Innovations has
also been implemented. Distribution was conducted in the places of Ahmedabad which include
Gangavas, Guptanagar, Kathyawadi, Khodiya Bapa ni Chali, Lalabapa ni Chali, Marwadi Vas,
Pravinnagar, Naranpura, Nathalalni Chali, Rana Vas, Valmiki Vas, Vasna, PG2, Labour Colonies -
Makarba, Godrej Garden City and Savvy Swaraj.

Besides the above, SAATH started receiving distress calls from the field areas and so we mobilized a city
level network of organizations – CISHAA (This organization had come together to work on housing
issues.) Thus, different organizations with different financial capacity came together with common goal
and started looking for vendors, took government permissions for conducting distribution drive and
started to prepare the ration kit for distribution drive, with different vendors supplying different ration
items. The distribution drive started from the storage warehouse to the areas where the distress calls were
received.

As most of the families are daily wage earners, apart from food/livelihoods the financial crisis is a huge
disaster. Apart from the financial crisis, education of the children is another loss for the families residing
in the labour colonies. Also, the majority of the families reside in rented rooms, for which finances are
unavailable to meet ends. SAATH is working out solutions in terms of refurnishing lost capital of
nano-entrepreneurs and also is attending to more livelihood augmenting action plans to address the
issues.

The above round-up is an awareness-raising exercise. To think inclusivity, to challenge ourselves on

empathy and organizational goals, SAATH feels humility in facing tortuous assemblies full of issues of
the poor suffering. Heart-wrenching stories are everywhere, but in doing its bit; we at SAATH come back
to our homes privileged to have been of use to some of them at least.