After facing 4 months of lockdown since March 2020, situation started to normalize and life went back to normal. However, the second wave of the pandemic has halted daily activities of Nepalese people once again and forced everyone to stay at home. The second wave has been even worse, having doubled the causalities within just a month. Many lost their family members, friends and loved ones, a loss that cannot be recovered.
Realizing the severity of the pandemic, local governments started imposing lockdown to arrest the spread. But situation quickly spiraled out of control in a very short period of time and shortages of hospital beds, oxygen, ventilators and other necessary stuffs became widespread.
Nepal is one of the poorest economies in the planet and around 20% Nepalese continue to languish in poverty, and the ongoing pandemic has even badly crippled the economy and livelihood of many. Since the government is not capable enough to address all present needs, civil society organizations and personalities began voluntary initiatives to address the existing problem and fulfill the need gap of the society.
Similarly, the entire Bikalpa family were also confined to their respective homes. There wasn’t much to do besides planning for the future and brainstorming for an alternative approach to organize activities. However, we have been helping the community by utilizing our vast database of participants and partners for arranging the blood to ease the situation.
Amidst the pandemic on 25th of May, I got a message from my childhood friend and classmate, Tripti Regmi who currently resides in the US. She inquired about the situation here and if our organization was conducting any humanitarian relief work during this crisis. I replied “Not much.”, and she immediately asked if she could send a couple hundred dollars to support the people in this crisis, and wanted us to make the most of it.
We discussed this offer within our team and decided to support the disabled, individuals making their living in the streets, and other underprivileged groups. Tripti and her friend Robert, immediately wired Rs. 40075 (USD $350) to us and we began identifying such vulnerable individuals and families, and soon enough made a list of purchase items. We wrote about Tripti and her friend’s generosity in the social media.
A day later, we received message from Kusum Poudel from Australia requesting us to accept her contribution of Rs. 25000 to support for the cause we had just started. Soon, Umesh Bhandari and Saroj Poudel from Biratnagar also joined in to offer support of Rs. 5000 and Rs. 2500 respectively. Recently Tosita Gurung and Nabin Ghale from Virginia (USA) Send 11453 rupees to support the cause. Within a few days, Rs. 83,953 had been collected from these 5 donors.
We purchased enough provisions to support 75 households for a week to 10 days. Besides this, we also supported food relief to the orphanage center and the individuals who are doing charity activities in Biratnagar. Obviously, this was not a one-person job and apart from me our team included Suman Khaling, Saroj Poudel, Punam Giri, Alina Rai, Bishal Rai, and Prakriti Thapaliya who were involved in the distribution of the relief support from Bikalpa’s office.
We understand that it is not a substantial support. We had our limitation. But those small help was still large enough for those 50 families and few more people to survive for a week at least, who don’t have to need to go to bed hungry during these hard times.
We heartily thank all the supporters who began this chain of support, and kept on extending it to make it possible to reach out to those 75 families and few social institutions. Also, our sincere thanks to all our volunteers and well-wishers for making this possible. Without your generosity and kindness, none of these would have been possible.
Note: With the generous support of our well-wishers, we were also able to support the needy people in first phase of lockdown in 2020.
Link of the photographs: