Disaster Response

DigiShakti

DigiShakti, DST's flagship program, gained even more relevance during COVID-19 to share relevant schemes, needs assessment and more importantly, a tool to stay connected with the communities we work with.

DigiShakti has been a lifeline for our community women both urban and rural. Digital technology became the tool used by DST for community engagement and information dissemination, especially sharing the various government schemes for relief during Lockdown. Providing the necessary support to the Self Help Groups and Federations during this time guiding them on loan processes and supporting members. Our community workers across the urban communities in Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad and rural villages have played key roles in Covid response in assessment and facilitating distribution of food kits!

MAHAVAN

As part of Mahavan, DST assisted in compiling the Mahavan Rapid Assessment Report in May 2020, to document and consolidate the challenges faced by the communities and the CSO sector and develop a strategic plan to address these in near future.

This rapid survey was an attempt to consolidate the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic and the lockdown, the challenges faced by the CSOs and the communities and the interventions planned to address them. COVID 19 has led to a global crisis. To some extent, the government is playing an active role in providing relief measures. CSOs have to play an active role in understanding the schemes and enable access to these relief measures to the communities. All the CSOs are involved in providing support to the communities putting at risk the frontline staff. There are no insurance schemes for the frontline staff and MAHAVAN should take this up with the state government as an immediate need. Funding is going to be a major challenge to the sector.

Covid Response Team

Covid Response team, led by CYDA and a collaborative effort of Corporates, launched several campaigns: “Flush the Virus” focused on sanitization and medical assistance, “No One Shall Go Hungry” provided food to the needy, supported migrant workers and worked in collaboration with local administrations, Corporations and the Police. Young volunteers reached out to the most vulnerable sections of Pune and provided essential support to tide them over the lockdown period and reached out to a population of almost 300,000 in Pune through their campaign on sanitisation. Their campaign reached 25000 needy people with food packets in its third week and continued.

Many of these communities, however, continued to grapple with the complete loss of livelihoods especially the daily wage earners, domestic workers and small businesses. Initial support of food and hygiene kits made an impact.