From uplifting coal mining community to offering free meals to patients: top Social Stories of the week
This week, SocialStory looked into the stories of the coal miners and other communities receiving essential products and services from non-profit organisations.
Food is a bare necessity for everyone. However, a large section of the population still struggles to get a single meal a day.
Lending them a hand are Khushroo Poacha — whose Seva Kitchen offers free food to the patients and relatives in hospitals across cities, and Dhanbad-based Nand Care Foundation, which provides coal mining and tribal communities with food, groceries, and ration for free.
Meet Nagpur’s Khushroo Poacha, who is feeding underprivileged patients for free
Khushroo Poacha, a Superintendent with the Central Railway (CR) in Nagpur, has started a successful strategy to feed thousands of individuals without a registered NGO or even opening a bank account.
In 2014, his mother was diagnosed with cancer and was admitted to the Central India Institute of Medical Science (CIIMS) for surgery. While he brought his own food from home, he noticed the relatives of other patients struggled in getting proper food to feed themselves.
Khushroo was deeply saddened when he saw the plight of underprivileged people near the hospital living on a few plain rotis, made on a temporary chullah at the corner of the ground. He shared this incident with his mother and she told him to do something about it and that the people of the world will help him. Thus started the journey of
.What will it take to make India truly open defecation free?
While the nation was declared open defecation free under the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) in 2019, the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) data highlights over 43 percent of rural households in India still don't have access to toilets.
The pandemic further slowed the progress of construction of new and maintenance of toilets, limiting the usage of toilets in rural India and the rural communities were invariably opened to threats and risks of open defecation.
These challenges halt the holistic development of rural communities. Safe sanitation is the precursor for protecting children under five years of age from life-threatening diseases, the overall health and wellbeing of rural families, menstrual hygiene and school attendance, especially for girls, to name a few. The COVID - 19 pandemic only demonstrated the critical importance of sanitation and hygiene.
How Cube Roots Foundation aims to uplift communities by betting on health, education, and environment
Delhi-based Cube Highways is a leading toll management and highways management company that invests in road and highway projects along with other select infrastructure sectors in India.
The company started its CSR (corporate social responsibility) arm Cube Roots Foundation (CRF) in 2020 to make a positive impact on the surrounding communities.
The foundation works across states such as Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Bihar, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka. It claims to have impacted communities by undertaking various social initiatives.
This Dhanbad-based NGO aims to uplift the coal miners and tribal communities
Two-years-ago when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, it changed our lives forever. As the government declared a nationwide lockdown, several hundred coal miners found themselves out of work as the mines too shut down. These daily wages meant their families ate and slept better, and their children could attend schools for a low fee.
Since 2015,
— founded by Deepak Kumar (26) — is working for the betterment of coal miners and tribal communities in and around Dhanbad, Jharkhand. In fact, the not-for-profit also provides education to the coal mine worker’s children.The NGO had raised over Rs 3.86 crore, with the support of the Donatekart platform, to provide grocery kits to thousands of coal miners and tribals, which had a huge impact on the community. It also assisted several coal miners to survive the second wave.
Edited by Suman Singh