Vizag Volunteers Tribal Food Distribution At Araku, Paderu and Lambasingi

The year of 2020 has been quite challenging throughout the World. Many countries have seen higher end of death rates than recovery rates of the patients suffering from the COVID pandemic. In India a lockdown was started initially from the time the virus started to spread at a small rate. Many strict rules were put in place and people followed them to keep themselves safe. As all the means of transport were shut down many of them were stranded with no help to reach their destination. 

It was then Vizag volunteers organization was formed by Mr. Satish.K led a small team of volunteers to help the needy and the animals. It was first started with a few members connecting through Whatsapp group which later framed a large number of people joining and forming a much bigger and stronger team. Many of them contributed by cooking food and those who couldn’t cook donated money to help the needy people. All the volunteers took initiative to know the areas where help was much needed so that they could serve them first. Many old age homes, orphanages and poor people living near bus stops were helped.

It was more than a month of serving the people in the city when at this time  Mr. Satish.K along with his team felt that when people living in a city like Visakhapatnam were having tough times getting groceries, milk and other daily essentials how are village people able to reach to all these things. The tribals go to get their groceries once in every 15 days and due to lockdown they might have faced more problems. It was Vizag Volunteers who planned to help the tribal villages living in the outskirts of the city of destiny, Visakhapatnam. The first step was to identify the villages that needed more help and were very poor with less cultivation chances. Mr. Krishna garu who works in these tribal villages came in contact with Mrs. Gnaneswari and Mr. Ravi to inform them about the locations near paderu. The team started to plan the list of things that were needed to give them.

The Vizag volunteers team planned to give :

Rice being the major procurement was bought from the Food Corporation of India, Visakhapatnam for a lesser price than the market and packed into bags of 10 kgs each. The complete packing was done in two days and we were able to pack 100 packets of groceries that could be distributed to 100 families. Mrs. Gnaneswari took the permission from Vizag DSP to enter into Paderu tribal villages due to the lockdown protocol.  Once the permission was given our team of volunteers, Mr.Satish.K, Mrs. Gnaneswari, Mr. Animesh and Mr. Ramji started their journey on a rented car, 30th April 2020 at 5 am in the morning to Paderu. As our rented truck carried the items it was not an easy drive through rough roads on a hilly area and we had to shift the items into a local van. We had to walk 2 kms from where we parked our vehicles as there were no roads leading to the villages. 

We successfully distributed 90 kits of groceries in Yegua Sompalli village, Pothuraju Metta village, Jeelugu Palli village and other Girjan villages near Paderu. The cost of each kit was Rs.700/- and one kit was given to each family for free that would last them for a week. Each kit contained:

• 10kgs of Rice
• 5Kgs of Potatoes
• 1Kg Onions
• 1Kg Salt packet
• 100 gms Chilly Powder
• 1Ltr Oil packet
• 3 Bath Soaps
• 1 Detergent Soap
• 1 Pickle bottle

Special thanks to Mr. Raju Garu and his team for their huge sponsor from the Ushodaya college students batch. Thanks to others Mr. Koti, Mrs. Pushpa, Mr. Ramesh, Mrs. Preethi, Mr. KVT Ramesh, Mr.Hari, Mr. Vuggina, Mr. Raghu ,Mrs. Saroja who contributed in small amounts for this project to be successful. After completing the distribution we were still left with few grocery kits. During the return journey we came to a place where there were hills all around and two small huts in between. There were few people who were living there and they had no food to eat due to the Lockdown. We distributed the remaining grocery kits to them and their happiness was unmatchable to anything. 

We saw the devastating situation in the first few months of 2021 when the second wave of Covid-19 created in Vizag. The number of infections and lives lost was very high compared to the first wave.

In 2020,  we observed a trend of spread of the virus to the villages after the spread to cities. We knew that the new mutants would affect the people in tribal areas and a team of Vizag Volunteers visited areas of Lambasingi to understand the ground situation and provide help to the people.

We provided few medicines this year and few types of medical equipment to Dr. Aparna from Lambasingi.

The help contained the following:

1. 6 Pulse Oxymeters

2. 2500 masks

3. 1 Set of Gloves

4. Virus X - House sanitizing liquid (Sufficient for over 150 houses)

5. NS and RL - 10 each

6. Dexamethasone - 10 Vials

7. IV Set - 10

8. IV Bandages - 10

9. COVID-19 Basic Kit - 50

10. COVID-19 Critical Kit - 26

The Basic Kit Contained:

1->Lem-C (Vitamin D3 with zinc chewable) - 15tablets

2-> AF-Clear Capsules -10

3–> Lumen A2Z - 15tablets

4->Rabbey-DSR - 10tablets

5->Montemen-LC - 10tablets

6->Doxyjoy-LB (Doxycycline) - 10tablets

7->Ivermectin - 3tablets

8-> Zink@vit - 15tablets

9->Dolo650 - 15tablets

10->Care-D3 - 4tablets

11-> ORS powder - 10 packets

12-> Rexcof DX Syrup - 1

The critical kit contained:

1 -> FAVICOVID 200 mg - 30 tabs

2 -> Apigat 2.5 - 1 box

3 -> Methodol 16 mg - 20 tablets

4 -> Pulmoclear - 14 tablets

Feedback From the Tribal People:

All the tribal people had no clue why we visited them in this pandemic unless they saw what we had to offer them. Some people expressed their feelings saying they had tears of happiness as no one came forward like this and helped them out during this pandemic. An old lady from one family blessed us for the humble act that we had shown upon them. 

The DSP of the tribal area was also happy to see our volunteer work and gave us his thoughts and support during this project.

It was a successful project completed by Vizag Volunteers that has given so much positive energy to work more for the betterment of the community. The happiness that our volunteers experienced seeing the joy on the faces of the Girjan tribe is something that can’t be measured with anything in life. The Vizag volunteers team is here to stay for the people no matter what the circumstances are. We as a team are capable of facing any situation to reach out to for help.