Working together to make 2022 a year of healing

Two years passed by. Still the whole world is battling with the Covid. One corona virus with multiple variants is rattling the earth with many threats - physical, social, emotional, and economical. The menacing virus is ripping apart the lives with health risks, unemployment, disrupted livelihood and distress migration; the pandemic is not yet over. The third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic across the globe and now in almost every state in India is being driven by the fast-spreading Omicron variant.

As per ILO, 81 million jobs have been lost as COVID-19 has created turmoil in Asia and Pacific labour markets. As the pandemic and eventual lockdowns wreaked havoc on the economy and livelihoods, around 230 mn Indians have been pushed into poverty during the past year, showed a report by Azim Premji University. In India, already 21.8M people have been rendered unemployed with the effect of the pandemic so far.

Support vulnerable and effected people by COVID

Restrictions and lockdowns have left millions of seasonal labourers especially the women in our country without livelihoods. It is not an exaggeration if we say that poverty outranks the pandemic with rising struggle to access nutritious food, loss of livelihoods and income. Daily wage earner families have been impacted hard. They are getting scared on their lives due to Omicron variant & Pandemic COVID-19. The workers lost their meager income. These families are suffering with starvation. Many of these workers are in dire need of food & sponsoring groceries kits as well as rebuilding their livelihoods. The required timely support will give much more confidence to them that at least they can have food in this Coronavirus situation and an employment opportunity in the near future to support their families.

Children’s Education and Health at risk! Vaccination can be a Life Saver

The new wave of covid-19 does not leave children. More and more children are contracting the virus. Vaccines which have received authorization by the government, for children and adolescents aged 15-18 years are safe and effective in reducing disease burden in these age groups. Thus, we need to put in special efforts for getting adolescents vaccinated from poorer, marginalised and vulnerable sections in rural and urban areas. Already children have lost two years of education. Last year 286 million children in the country were affected due to school closures. Education is still oscillating between school closures and openings. Child labour has risen to 160 Million globally as per ILO and UNICEF, the first increase in two decades.

• Establishing covid care centres at UP, Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Delhi, Maharashtra to provide support to vulnerable people to mitigate COVID-19 transmission, morbidity, and mortality.
• Cash support for families, especially families headed by single women.
• Distribution of 6500 oxygen concentrators across multiple Primary Health Centers, Community Health Centers as well as hospitals within 11 states of India. We have also been able to support setting oxygen generation plans in UP(Noida, Bahraich) and Tamil Nadu(Ttiruvannāmalai & Chennai)
• Organizing vaccination drives to keep the labour force ready for work.
• Availing jobs and livelihood opportunities under MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act that offers 100 days employment to the rural poor).
• Providing ration kits to meet the immediate needs of families in hunger.
• Helping people to avail entitlements of government’s Public Distribution System (PDS) .
• Enabling worker families receive the benefit of government housing schemes.
• Skill building and setting up collectives for women in farming and small businesses such as support to women collectives that include migrants, daily wage labourers, landless women and women with disabilities to engage in vegetable farming.
• Campaigns to link the covid effected people with the government schemes.
• Facilitating learning centres and enabling child friendly spaces across multiple states within India such as Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal, Karnataka, Bihar etc.
• Developing leaders among the communities and through capacity building programmes equip them to assess their own needs and approach the government for their rightful entitlements.

Support ActionAid to combat covid-19 and impact of Omicron variant against food insecurity, health, and livelihood risks!

Your support and our efforts together can make this 2022 a year of healing to those who are physically, emotionally, socially, and economically vulnerable. As India faces a fresh third wave of covid-19, millions of lives are at higher risk. We urge you to support us. Donating even a small amount can bring a big impact in the life of a family and community.

You can support us and donate on the purposes such as enabling and concentrating ActionAid’s efforts towards:

• Support vulnerable people affected/infected by covid-19
• Livelihood support to the vulnerable groups of workers focussed on women, individually as well as within the different states of India as a part of collectives.
• Vaccination awareness programs especially for children.
• Enhancing skills and capacities of marginalised women to set up their own businesses
• Establishing safe learning spaces for children, preventing child marriages, child labour and any other form of abuse.
• Providing dry ration support to the people across different states who need it most.