How our organization is coping with the pandemic

For over a decade, Solace’s mission has been caring for children with long term illnesses from financially backward families, and offering succor to these affected families. Solace’s backbone has been the volunteers who serve as a bridge between these families and the organization. Along with providing medical costs for the sick child, Solace also empowers its volunteers to make educated decisions on providing additional social support for the family if required (eg. helping pay off rent dues, house repair expenses, medical check-ups for other sick family members, etc.). Unfortunately, despite its best efforts, the current global pandemic has put Solace, like many other non-profits, in crisis, and forced it to depart from its original model. That being said, Solace is making the best of the circumstances and its limited resources, and is hopeful that it can resume its social support program once we tide over this crisis .

For the first time since its inception, in light of the current situation, Solace, backed by its Board of Trustees, has concluded that certain immediate operational changes need to be made for the organization to survive in the long term. The objective of this message is to inform our patrons of the major changes that Solace plans to roll out as we all try to tide over this pandemic; why these changes need to be made, and how patrons can continue to support Solace during this difficult time.

Why Do We Need These Changes?

A major factor behind the success of Solace has been its implementation of the decisions and the long term vision for it as envisioned by our Trustee Board. Earlier this month, the board came to a conclusion that changes to our operating model were inevitable, after evaluating our current financial reserves and projected revenue in the coming months.

Why Have Our Incoming Funds & Donations Dwindled?

Our organization has always strived to ensure continued support to the families of our sick children. Unfortunately, the ongoing pandemic has set us back, and it became important to take stock of our limited resources and rethink how to make the most effective use of what is available to us. These are the factors that have influenced our decision.

The spread of this pandemic has brought much of the global economic activity to a halt, resulting in many NGOs controlling and cutting costs. Needless to say, Solace is only one of the numerous organizations hit by this pandemic.

1. Solace has been proud to qualify for many Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) funds, set aside by corporations for philanthropic purposes, since it needs highly streamlined and transparent operations as the primary qualifiers. This has been a significant source of our revenue in the past. Currently the government of India has directed corporations to divert CSR funds for 2020 towards the national COVID-19 fund. We are empathetic to this directive, because these funds are crucial to help the lives affected by this pandemic.
2. Solace has evolved on a model where volunteers work closely with affected children and their families. Volunteers are implicitly trusted to make decisions on what resources are to be allocated to each family, based on their specific financial and social needs. Due to the pandemic and lockdown regulations, our volunteers have not been able to assess in-patient conditions. To ensure the safety of our volunteers and beneficiaries, we will be making changes to the types of support that we provide.

Board Recommendations Approved By Solace President and Secretary:

These operational changes for the next 6 months will go into immediate effect.

1. Solace’s greatest priority now will be restricted primarily to providing life-saving drugs. This means, all social support provided to our beneficiaries will be partially or fully stopped for this duration of time.
2. Families will be provided with a monthly basic food kit to help them survive these very trying times, on a need-basis.
3. Solace will continue to take in new cases. We will be prioritizing cases that were registered since January 2016 over other cases, as we have found that these require more urgent attention over others. This is applicable to our centers at Kochi, Calicut and Thrissur.
4. Volunteers will no longer personally assess inpatient conditions of our beneficiaries. A standardized approach will be adopted where every beneficiary is allocated with required medication (on a case-by-case basis). Although we are aware that this affects our long term mission to provide holistic support to our beneficiaries, we are compelled to limit our resource allocation due to the current circumstances.
5. All home care services have been temporarily stopped. Each beneficiary will be assessed solely on a case-by-case basis.
6. The Solace respite center will be closed for the next 6 months to reduce costs and to avoid the risks associated with COVID-19 to the people working there.

How Patrons Can Help At This Time

We thank our volunteers and patrons who are committed to supporting various COVID-19 related causes globally at this time. We have been hesitant to reach out to you at this difficult time, because we do not wish to distract you from the other more pressing causes you may currently be engaged in supporting.

Unfortunately, the financial situations of the families we have been supporting have further deteriorated due to the crisis. We are worried about how we can provide continued support to them. If you are in a position to help in any small way, it would be greatly appreciated, and would help restore some semblance of normalcy to these families that are currently struggling. Here are some ways you can help if you are based in the USA; for other locations including India, please check out this link. No amount is too small, and your kindness would truly mean a lot.