Our ongoing Covid relief support
An update from the awareness campaign in MM hills
As the Covid 19 pandemic continues, so does our commitment to supporting Covid relief efforts in Chamarajanagar district. The second wave of Covid has ravaged the communities we work with. Dr. Siddappa Shetty and team at ATREE have been working in BR and MM hills with Lantana artisans from these vulnerable communities for over 25 years now. Previously, we’ve written in detail about our Covid fundraiser and relief support on the CSEI blog.
This blogpost is an update on our Covid relief support activities. Both mask adoption and relief work have been poor especially among Soliga and Bedagampana tribes in Malai Mahadeshwara hills wildlife sanctuary. ATREE, along with its centres, Centre for Environment and Development (CED) and CSEI, is supporting our partner organisations to provide soaps and around 7000 masks to this community. This initiative is being funded by the Humanist.
Spreading awareness about Covid19
The Covid awareness campaign in MM hills began on 21 July 2021. This was organised jointly with the Institute of Public Health (IPH), Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra (VGKK), Soliga Abirudhi Sangha (SAS) and Kushumale Kala Sangha. As part of this campaign, 7000 Covid kits containing masks, soaps and flyers on covid awareness have been distributed to 10 remote villages in the MM Hills forest area.
How we all pitched in
CSEI’s role was to mobilise our donor network to channel funding to this much needed initiative. We got in touch with Dr. Jogin Desai who we know through his association with Social Venture Partners. Since CSEI-ATREE are already working with Social Venture Partners, we were able to move this conversation along and secure funding pretty quickly.
VGKK sent their doctors, Dr. Tania and Dr. Kalyani to the awareness campaigns for medical support. They have already been working on health issues of the Soliga community and were familiar faces in the community. VGKK also helped organise volunteers and accommodation for the campaign team.
Kusumale Kala Sangha is an internationally recognised cultural team that performs street plays on important societal topics and aims to promote Soliga art and culture. Led by Basawaraju and his daughter, they performed street plays to educate the community members on Covid 19.
Soliga Abhivrudhi Sangha (SAS) is an active grassroots Soliga organisation working on various issues of the community in the Chamarajanagar district. SAS organised a month-long COVID-19 awareness campaign in Soliga villages across Chamarajanagar district. However, Soligas continued to be hesitant about taking vaccinations due to the news of post-vaccination deaths.
To dispel these rumours, a meeting was organised with Soliga village leaders in Ponnachi village cluster to update them on COVID-19 activities including upcoming vaccination drives and discuss the action plan for the coming months.
Malai Mahadeshwara Hills Community Conservation Center (MCCC), is a community-based conservation center established by CED-ATREE in 2008. It consists of a field office and five field staff who have been working closely with the community in MM Hills. They helped organise and execute the mask distribution and COVID-19 awareness campaign successfully in MM Hills.
Our learnings
- Mask distribution and awareness campaign could have been more useful, if done before the second wave in April 2021.
- Community members loved the quality of the masks and were appreciative of the initiative.
To know more about our work with invasive species in MM Hills, reach out to Sandeep Hanchanale: sandeep.hanchanale@atree.org.
To purchase products made from Lantana by artisans from this region, visit https://www.thelantanacollective.org/
