Our COVID-19 focus is on 3 aspects :
Hunger Crisis
Disrupting Education
Healthcare Infrastructure
The Challenge : Pandemic-induced Hunger Crisis
• The pandemic has pushed over 75 million more people in India into poverty, according to the Pew Research Centre.
• For poor children in India, this impact has been worsened by multiple school closures ending their access to free mid-day meals.
• The result has been a rise in a severe but under-reported hunger crisis spreading across India.
Vision Rescue’s Response Interventions
Vision Rescue Communities
• Distributing Emergency Grocery Kits to our children’s families every month from April 2020 to date. Each kit comprised grains, lentils and other staples sufficient to feed a family of five for 40 meals.
• To meet the need of rising child malnutrition, from May 2021 we began distributing High-Nutrition Grocery Kits comprising 15 items of high nutritional value such as, peanuts, soya, chickpeas etc, along with staples, to feed a family of five for 70 nutritious meals.
Communities Nationwide
• We networked with 50+ non-profit organisations and government bodies at 166 villages, 28 districts, in 14 states across India to distribute Emergency Grocery Kits to communities struggling with hunger.
• In addition, we supplemented 6 community kitchens with groceries, and provided cooked meals to daily-wage labourers and police officers during the reverse migration crisis.
Our Impact
Beneficiary Testimonials
My husband is a construction labourer and we manage on his daily-wage income alone. Within a few days after the lockdown in March 2020, he could no longer find work and we had no money left and no food in our house. We were wondering how we would survive the days to come. That’s when Vision Rescue came into our community and gave my family and hundreds of others here ration kits. As a VR Community Champion, I personally went to over 40 houses to door-deliver grocery bags to them. In most houses, they were preparing to eat their last few meals. When they saw me come with rations, they began crying. They said they couldn’t believe that help had reached their doorstep.
Israti Mumbai, Maharashtra
At the foothills of the Kasara Ghats, there is a tribal community - Radaisapada comprising 457 people. Only two families here own farmland. The others survive by gathering dry firewood, kala jamun and mangoes from the forests nearby and selling it on the railway platform in the town. When the lockdown was enforced, this daily-wage income was completely wiped out, and these already impoverished tribal communities went hungry. One person died from starvation. When this news came on local TV, Vision Rescue contacted us and gifted 120 families here a month’s rations and grocery kits for 40 meals each to 200 other families. We could finally see smiles here. Earlier, this community feared death by the virus or death by starvation. We thank you that the latter is no longer a worry.
TBU Sanstha NGO Igatpuri, Maharashtra.
My newborn baby and I are both sick. My father cannot take us to the hospital due to the lockdown. Both my father and brother who work as daily labourers are now jobless. Our house has broken down during (cyclone)Amphan. We have no proper shelter now. Every time it rains there is water seeping through our roof. Thank you for reaching out to us and giving us groceries to survive this time.