Saturday, 26 June 2021
Friday, 25 June 2021
The storm of Covid was desperate to take the entire human race in its arm. There was mourning of death all around. The government system was getting insufficient to save lives. Death was raging everywhere. Crematoriums were overwhelmed with the dead bodies. Humanity was beginning to be ashamed. Hospitals were full. Medicines and oxygen were not available. In some families whole lives were at stake.
Efforts were replaced by prayers. In such tiring times, there was a need of messengers of god. The one who can snatch away the life from the mouth of death .In the series of Article, I am going to discuss about these messengers of god. They were working 24X7.They were challenging their limitation every moment. They were creating miracles. I am talking about the individual volunteers, volunteer organizations who were working day in day out and trying to leave their never ending foot print on humanity.
Who were they? They were ordinary people like you and me. You could find them anywhere. You could see them in your Mohalla, society, college, work place .Only thing which make them different or extra ordinary is when situation arrived they behaved differently. They didn’t curse the situation but fought back. They didn’t waste their time to criticize the govt but created the alternative. They didn’t see the cast, religion but only saw the humanity. These torch bearers of humanity are endless. I have searched some of these diamonds and putting their side of story.
Messengers of God- TEAM-KMECT (Kashmiri Medical Emergency & Charitable Trust)
KMECT as a philanthropic NGO is not new to the Kashmiri Pandit community. The tragic death of an infant in 2009 and at times delayed treatment to needy forced few likeminded persons of community members to think of making some formal kind of arrangement for the needy to serve in timely manner. Same persons namely Late Sqd Leader B L Sadhu (Founder Trustee & Ex. Chairman), Sunil K Thusu, Jatinder Kaw, Rajeev Munshi, Late Vikram Bhat, mooted the idea of forming the trust called KMECT. Team was ably encouraged by other community members and in the year 2009 Trust KMECT was born. In the shortest span of time trustees like Late Sh. S K Khazanchi, Sanjay Dhar, Ajay Pandita, Maharaj Pajan, Dr. Neeru Kharu also joined for this noble cause.
Late Sqd Ldr B.L. Sadhu became the founder chairman with Sunil K Thusu as vice chairman and Jatinder Kaw as general secretary cum treasurer. Currently trust is being led by Sunil K Thusu chairman and Jatinder kaw General Secretary and apart from Chairman and Secretary, core team of the KMECT consists of Maharaj Pajan, Sanjay Dhar, Rajiv ji Munshi, Dr. Anil Bhan, Dr. Upinder Kaul, Dr. Anusheel Munshi, Shiban Krishan Khanzanchi, Ajay Pandita, Neeru Kharu. Also day to day trust work at the back office managed by two young community member Sumeet Bhat and Ankita Kaul.
KMECT ensure that no community members should die due to lack of finances. After doing due diligence, It directly releases the fund to the hospital / Chemists / Labs and Distributors. Trust has the panel of more than three dozen doctors headed by Dr. K L Chowdhury. It provides consultancy services to the registered patients of KMECT. Trust has developed full proof system of financing to the needy one. Whenever requirement arises, its team of doctors checks the necessary papers and test reports. Once they satisfied then other team checks the authenticity of documents and establish that the case needs support irrefutably and to have more transparency the funds are released directly in the account of the hospital / chemist / Test Labs.
Till now KMECT has able to disburse approximately INR 100.00 million to 2500 odd patients, the needy ones.
In this back ground I am going to talk about the KMECT and Jatinder Kaw whom I am in touch with. He is one of the founder trustees and General Secretary of KMECT. When second wave of Covid knocked our door.KP community was not an exception. It was also badly affected like any of us. They also needed doctors, hospitals, oxygen cylinders, food and many other items. Whether it is big cities like NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore or in Jammu, KP community rendered homeless due to militancy in Kashmir were crying for help. Effective and timely help was needed.
How KMECT would remain behind in this pandemic. KMECT trustees consulted within their team and decided to provide resources proactively to the community members. Immediately contact was made with ground level teams and volunteers and KMECT coordinated and formed the response team and tied up with alliance partners for logistics and effective relief for Covid19 patients as under-
HEAD COVID RESPONSE: |
MAHARAJ PAJAN |
HEAD FUNDRAISING: |
JATINDER KAW |
HEAD PATIENT CARE: |
SANJAY DHAR- |
PATIENT COORDINATION: |
DR NEERU KHAROO |
GURGAON: |
AJAY PANDITA |
KMECT ALLIANCE PARTNERS: |
|
Covid Response Team Delhi NCR: |
Col Rajeev Raina |
Satisar Volunteers Dwarka – Delhi: |
Vinod Fotedar,Sh Rakesh Tickoo |
Zara Volunteers-Vaishali |
Manoj Bhan ,Sh Amit Raina ,Ms. Monica
Razdan |
We Care Faridabad: |
Digambar Raina |
KP Sabha Bhadurgarh: |
Sunil Koul,Sh Ravi Bhat |
Covid Response Team Jammu |
Ajay Raina,Sunil Raina Rajnaik |
Shreya Bhat Mission Hospital, Jammu: |
Roop Krishan |
Shalimar Volunteers – Jammu (For FREE FOOD) |
Rakesh Bhat |
KP’s Helping Hand Kashmir (Kashmir
Province) |
Bharat Raina. Sunny Raina-Mattan;Ashish
Ganjoo-Anantnag;Rajender Bushan-Baramulla;Rakesh Kr Pandita- Kupwara |
KP Sabha Chandigarh: |
Romaish Pandita; Chandan Sadhu |
The lists of equipment’s were placed in position which was required for the effected in various parts of country. Cumulatively KMECT with support of associations like SG Covid Googlers-Singapore, Kashmiri Pandit Association NSW-Australia, OVBI USA, Kashmiri Overseas Association – USA, Global Kashmiri Pandits in Diaspora, Kashur Raag USA, KP Team UK led by Amit Kachroo.
Managed 46 six oxygen concentrators, 36 Oxygen cylinders with Flow Meter and 5 BiPAP machines and other items in the field. Remained in touch with the field volunteers for timely help. KMECT panel of doctors remains in touch with the KP community for consultancy and referral services as well. My best wishes to KMECT team in general and Jatinder Kaw in particular. May almighty give them strength so that they keep serving the humanity.
Messengers of God- Rakesh Bhat and Digamber Raina
Rakesh Bhat was busy in his carpet business (shalimarfloorings.com). He never thought in his wildest dream that pandemic would hit his area so hard. He got the feeling of Covid affected family when Covid reached in his own home. He understood that when members of the family infected with Covid then even cooking a food would be difficult. Somehow he managed to overcome the difficulty but thought to serve the society. He thought that the problem he faced in his own family others should not face .He started serving the food at Covid patient`s homes in Jammu.
It started initially with 20-30 packets of food then gradually increased to 40-50 per day .When numbers of food packet started to increase then he converted own carpet factory into kitchen and deployed own staff for preparing ,packing and delivering the food. During this food distribution, got the request from Gandhi Nagar Hospital, ESI hospital and police for delivering the food. So he started delivering the food in hospitals as well.
Now number of packet (one packed consist of meal, few biscuits and two water bottle) reached to 350. 350 packets of lunch and 350 packets of dinner got distributed continuously till 31st of May. Initially he made all the arrangements by own only but gradually people came forward and started donating grains and other stuff .Apart from distributing the food packets he also mobilized the fund and got established Covid care center Sharda in talabtillo. He got donated inverters, Ac, concentrators to the hospital.
His selfless service has left a deep impression on the hearts and minds of the people of Jammu. My good luck to him and his team.
Digamber Raina
The pandemic had knocked in the homes of Faridabad. Like other cities, this city too had started losing its dear ones. Lives were yearning for oxygen. The hospitals were proving to be insufficient to save lives. Life imprisoned in homes, looking for a messiah how can hold on his thread of life and provide badly needed oxygen. The roads were deserted. Covid cases were increasing day by day. People were not ready to come out.
They were not ready to help others. They were in grief and panic. They
were thinking that who knew when their turn will come. Second wave was so
infectious that if one member of family got infected then whole family would be
infected. This was certainly a crisis situation in Faridabad. In this scenario
Digamber Raina came in the picture.
He is a founder of WE CARE MEDISERVICE ( www.wecaremediservices.com) a medical services providing company, which deals in oxygen home care services. At one point of time city was at the peak of the pandemic, it was very difficult for him to choose whether to do the business or to do the charity. Fortunately he managed to do the both. He provided the equipment to the clients and charged to them who can afford and at the same time provided free to needy one.
His phone was available to receive the distress call 24X7.During the
emergency he even delivered the equipment at odd hours. He was managing around
1000 calls a day. He provided 38 big cylinders and two concentrators free of
cost to Faridabad police to cater police families. Provided free oxygen
services to KP community in association with KMECT and KP NGO. Also provided
free oxygen cylinders to poor patients. My best of luck to him and his team. May almighty give him strength to serve the humanity.
You can also visit:
How to get the financial assistance for Covid affected families?
To BE CONTINUED…………
Saturday, 12 June 2021
The storm of Covid was desperate to take the entire human
race in its arm. There was mourning of death all around. The government system
was getting insufficient to save lives. Death was raging everywhere.
Crematoriums were overwhelmed with the dead bodies. Humanity was beginning to
be ashamed. Hospitals were full. Medicines and oxygen were not available. In
some families whole lives were at stake. Efforts were replaced by prayers. In
such tiring times, there was a need of messengers of god. The one who can
snatch away the life from the mouth of death .Today in the series of Article, I
am going to discuss about these messengers of god. They were working 24X7.They
were challenging their limitation every moment. They were creating miracles. I
am talking about the individual volunteers, volunteer organizations who were
working day in day out and trying to leave their never ending foot print on
humanity.
Who were they? They were ordinary people like you and me.
You could find them anywhere. You could see them in your Mohalla, society,
college, work place .Only thing which make them different or extra
ordinary is when situation arrived they behaved differently. They didn’t
curse the situation but fought back. They didn’t waste their time to
criticize the govt but created the alternative. They didn’t see the cast,
religion but only saw the humanity. These torch bearers of humanity are
endless. I have searched some of these diamonds and putting their side of
story.
The Messengers of God- Padma Foundation
Padma Foundation team
Their main area of operation is in Jabalpur in MP and in Bihar. They are the group of young enthusiastic passionate individuals who are eager to help people. They are doing a lot of social work. But today I will talk about their work related to Covid. When lockdown imposed during the first wave there were lot of hardship among the migrant workers. TV cameras were showing how they were fleeing their work place. How they were restless and fighting for survival. At that difficult time padma team came in the picture in Jabalpur. After seeing the plight of the workers, padma team got into action. They formed core team. Azad Patel, Mohit Agarwal, C.K.Thakur, Yogesh Srivastva, Nilesh Mishra, Mukesh Sahi and Mukesh Shraff were part of the core team.They started providing all kind of logistics support to the migrants. They distributed food, lassi to the labrours. Once migrants issue subsided then they focused on Covid frontline workers. They started providing refreshment to frontline workers. During the second wave, story of Jabalpur was not different from the other cities. Number of patient was increasing day by day. The most difficult problem in the Jabalpur was unavailability of Oxygen. Oxygen was not available in the hospital so this team approached district admin and requested to allow them to procure and store oxygen cylinders. After informing the authorities they started procuring and distributing oxygen cylinders to the patients. As Covid cases picked up, requirement of blood and plasma felt. So this team organized mass blood donation camps in Jabalpur in MP and Muzaffarpur in Bihar. When cases were increasing they started working proactively in the area. They started door to door campaign for giving the msg of social distancing. They distributed mask, sanitizer and soaps in villages. To boost the immune system they distributed the ayurvedic kadha in villages. During the pandemic they felt that people in rural areas hesitant of taking the vaccine. So with the help of district authorities they adopted few centers and mobilize people for vaccination. This drive is still going on and padma team is ably managing the work.
The Messengers of God- Ketan Dand and Minal
Messengers of God- Ketan Dand and Minal Popat
Ketan Dand is a Corporate Law Consultant and Insolvency Professional with over 2 decades of experience from Mumbai. He is now setting up a platform for channelizing relief to Covid-affected families.
Minal Popat is a house wife and taking good interest in Social work.
Imagine the scenario, a city is spread in 100 km area and in the pandemic situation very limited health resource is available. A patient who needs to avail the facility has every min important. He doesn’t know where the hospital bed is available. Where is the availability of oxygen or the medicine? It may sound simple but this is not so simple. Just put yourself in the shoes of the patient`s and think, helpline numbers were not responding. There was so much stress on health infrastructure that almost nothing was available. In that scenario few volunteers tried to make a system where verified information should be available to the needy at the earliest. In this back ground story of Ketan and Minal starts. When pandemic was on peak. Ketan thought to contribute as a volunteer. He added Minal in the group. They formed many WhatsApp groups. They started collecting the data from social media. Compiled the data and started providing to the needy in west and north India. This was the initial stage of the work. Problem started when they started getting wrong data from social media. Now they started verifying the data. Once they verify at their level then they further provided to the needy one. Now another problem started. Whenever verified data they post, volunteers from different corner started calling those numbers for re verifying. Due to too many calls those resources switch off their phones. So now the same data which were active, verified became non responsive or unavailable due to over enthusiasm of the volunteers. So they had to change the strategy now. Instead of calling the source for verification they started calling to the individuals who have posted the data and started confirming the source .Once source got confirmed they directly connected to the needy one. In this process lot of time and call got saved and resource judiciously got used. In the whole exercise they also took help of Seva International and Human kind global. Now Ketan is trying to establish rehabilitation program for the Covid affected families.
My best wished to today`s messengers of god. Please keep inspiring us. I hope your good work will keep making the statement louder and louder.
You can also visit:
How to get the financial assistance for Covid affected families?
Friday, 11 June 2021
Who were they? They were ordinary people like you and me. You could find them anywhere. You could see them in your Mohalla, society, college, work place .Only thing which make them different or extra ordinary is when situation arrived they behaved differently. They didn’t curse the situation but fought back. They didn’t waste their time to criticize the govt but created the alternative. They didn’t see the cast, religion but only saw the humanity. These torch bearers of humanity are endless. I have searched some of these diamonds and putting their side of story.
Covid Response Team-KP
Colonel was part of Indian army as a maintainability Engineer. Right now he is perusing his MBA in hospital administration
When Covid Cases started increasing social worker in him got distraught and wanted to do something for the society .So he along with Ravin Tarakru, Sunil Rajanak, Vikas , Sandeep Raj Kaul formed the group KP(Kashmir Pandit) Response team -. This group started working under the active guidance of the core team members- Sunil Raina Rajanak, Usha Munshi, AVM Zadoo, Asheesh, Col Bhan, Rajiv Shukla, AVM Butola
This group further got divided into the sub groups like
1) Response teams- it had 4 groups .Every group had 256 members.
2) Doctor’s group-There was 43 doctors in this group.
3) Data handling group- Collecting the raw data from social media and then verifying it and then further providing it to the needy one was the KRA of this team.
There were more than 30 volunteers who were providing 24X7 services to the needy one.
They identify the problem in Delhi NCR-
1) Unavailability of the hospital beds
2) Unavailability of the doctors
3) Unavailability of the oxygen cylinder and concentrators.
Govt machinery had already been exhausted. So what would be the way out? This team thought out of the box and spoke to few hospitals authorities and supported them to enhance their capability and in bargain they took commitment from hospitals that 50% of these facility will be exclusively available for kashmiri migrants, old and destitute patients. For arranging these resources they got able support by likeminded organizations- Kashmir overseas association, Kashmiri Medical Emergency Charitable Trust and Kakini Building Humanity. With the support of these organizations they donated SJM hospital Noida dual oxygen cylinders, flow meters, Medichek Faridabad and Sri Nand lal swami hospital Shalimar Garden were provided concentrators.
They have got little bit of foot hold in hospitals. Now they had a resource issue for home isolation patients and then for doctors consultation. They arranged concentrator, flow meters for supporting the home isolation patients. They formed the panel of doctors who gave online advice and also conducted zoom sessions. After creating the parallel infrastructure team focused on available govt resources. For exploring existing health infra of Delhi NCR, team started physically verifying the availability of resource in hospitals and then providing to the patients.
With the help of Singapore kashmiri community, basic medicine were provided to the patients.
With the help of Singapore kashmiri community, basic medicine were provided to patients. Langar seva for families of COVID patients was organized by incorporating KP yuva sangathan which provided hot food to patients’ families.
In due course cases started declining in Delhi NCR but in Jammu cases were increasing. They diverted all their energy in Jammu. Two groups were formed in Jammu. The organizations which responded were many in general but Maha gaytri trust in particular which provided and augmented volunteers and extended funding for initial relief. Active member of col Rajeev Raina team ,Dr Rakesh Raina and Sunil Raina Rajanaka spearheaded the Jammu volunteer operations. Jammu wave got subsided but it was felt that vaccination drive needs to be put on fast track by aiding govt resources. So team is in close contact with Kakini and Narayana hospital for vaccination of masses at Jammu and this might be a reality in a few days.
Once operation got stabilized in Jammu they started focusing on Srinagar. They coordinated with kakini Building Humanity and this organization played a vital role by providing Logistic support in moving of the resources to Vessu and other kashmiri camps. Since migrant population here live in one room huyments, the isolation of Covid patients was not possible. The Covid response teams got into action and with the help of Vijay Raina and Bharat Raina, provided resources to convert the schools into Covid Centres and isolation wards.
Covid response team got hugely benefitted from the service of Ms Ashima as journalist counselor of volunteers and Ms Bharti.Ms bharti organized the data for doctor 4kp campaign and provided filtered data to the volunteers.
In the whole exercise they saved thousands of lives and now Covid cases have declined so they have diverted their energy into rehabilitation. They are not only serving the society by their untiring work but also leaving very good mark on humankind. Purpose of bringing out this story is to make people aware that when there is a dark everywhere god will certainly send someone for fighting the darkness. In this story Team KP is that someone. My best wishes to the team.
You can also visit:
How to get the financial assistance for Covid affected families?
To BE CONTINUED……………………