The second time around, COVID impacted life and livelihoods in the community severely. With the rise in mortalities, vulnerability levels also increased sharply. Several deaths were reported every day by our community cadres. The pandemic deepened pre-existing inequalities, exposing vulnerabilities in social, political and economic systems. During the first phase, the virus was largely considered an urban phenomenon, however by the second phase it had spread to rural India alike.
According to a State Bank of India research paper, in April 2021, rural districts accounted for over 45.5% of overall new cases compared to 37.9% in March.
Our response to COVID-19 to prevent the spread in communities comprised of multiple relief activities around health, food security and livelihood promotion.
Our response will be immediate relief, medium term support and long-term actions as well. Because we believe immediate needs to the community is very critical. Manjari Foundation would like to support these families for short term requirements like support for living, ration distribution, linkages with government schemes, counselling, etc and long term needs like education support for their children, livelihood intervention, etc. The one main areas of intervention is developing isolation centre in Panchayats, as we know still due to lack of institutional isolation centres poor families are suffering a lot, because they do not have much space in house hold to isolate himself/herself properly.
At the same time due to ignorance they are also spreading it to other members as well. In that context isolation centres and where possible home isolation support is very critical to reduce the spread of corona virus. Vaccine hesitancy is still high in rural areas, so we need to create awareness and also need to support to facilitate vaccination enrolments as well.
We initiated the Chetan Rath to spread awareness across villages
We identified vulnerable families and provided free medical kits.
Families were handed out free dry ration kits to last them for 15 days.
Our SHG Federations distributed Kada (an immunity-boosting drink prepared from a mix of herbs) in their respective villages.
Our SHG Federations spread awareness of the benefits of vaccination
We set up Isolation centres in collaboration with local Gram Panchayats
Our comprehensive intervention had three aspects immediate humanitarian relief (ensuring food security essential items, awareness, sanitisation & PPE kits), access to services and entitlements (through government schemes through engagement with local administrations) and economic restoration (through livelihood promotion).
GIRL SMILING
MORNING COFFEE
STONE ARCH
A BUNCH OF GRAPES
Partnership: We are working in collaboration and partnership with local government administrations including include collectorates, district hospitals, PHCs, CSOs, along with donors and local Panchayats.
Women institutions as front-runners: In our approach, SHG federations and their associate tiers are the core of our interventions and they lead the programmes in their respective villages. They participate in all aspects from problem/challenges identification, planning, execution, monitoring and supervision as well.
on Vulnerable Communities: Our main focus is on vulnerable communities worst affected by the pandemic.
Our Testimonials
'Manjari’ literally translates to “seed of Tulsi”, a sacred Indian plant. When women mobilise themselves to form institutions, they are empowered to sow their own ‘seeds of change’.
"Development of Corporate Citizenship (DoCC), the social internship program of SPJIMR has been collaborating with Manjari Foundation since 2015. This has been fruitful relationship for us. I want to emphasise the four following themes. First the internships give our students a different idea of leadership which also gives them a sense of requirements for the future and adds to the ethics of sociological content. The participants acquire a notion of innovation- both social and technical which gives them a systemic view of the society. Such an empirical location gives them both a sense of limits and possibilities of what they can do. Environmental consciousness and gender sensitivity constitute two critical parts of social responsibility as we define it today. The participants of the internship understand what these key concepts mean in everyday sense. Internship at Manjari adds to their imagination in this direction. We value this relationship."
"Our collaboration with Manjari has allowed us to better understand the approach of solidarity groups and concretely towards the empowerment of women in the commune of Logo.The participation of Indian PRCs has been beneficial because the women have appropriated easily by seeing that they are rural women Indian women who share their experiences with them. The Camide team was formed by the professionals of Manjari with enthusiasm and professionalism and is able to reproduce most of the activities. This period of collaboration opens up prospects for our two structures to replicate the model in Mali and Africa. We again thank Manjari for all the efforts made for Camide and particularly the Director Sanjay Kumar. We were able to reach more than 2,500 women and more than 180 million CFA francs of credit granted four test henhouses substantial support for the winter and market gardening campaign in terms of results thank you."
"Without larger vision and dedication of the team of MF and its leadership, both vertical and horizontal growth would have never been possible to pick up at this level in this short history of its evolution. Since I have been associated with the Sakhi project of MF funded by Hindustan Zinc for the last 2 years, the happiness and confidence seen in their faces of hundreds of women in the villages proves its vitality. I have also witnessed the UN-women funded second chance education project (SCE) being implemented in 3 districts under the guidance of PRADAN is a much worthy to reach out to those young women in the age group of 16-35 who have been deprived in their childhood with the education, skills and employment are now happily enrolled and trained to overcome these deprivations with much positive outcome. While writing all these statements, I recall each visit to the project area to witness the change processes that were taking place within those women who had never dreamed of being so empowered and self-reliant so soon in their lifetimes."
"Manjari Foundation is IPE Global’s implementation partner in Dholpur, Rajasthan under the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), UK supported Project Udaan that aims at reducing teenage pregnancies. They have been instrumental in successfully piloting interventions for improving the knowledge of adolescents around sexual and reproductive health (SRH) in Bari block of Dholpur. Their efforts in organizing a team to take up the issue of adolescent SRH and facilitating its implementation with great sensitivity across the block has not only been recognized by the district administration, but has also paved way for attempting a scale-up across the district. Their coordination with the community-level institutions, local government bodies and the target group has been noteworthy and exemplary. "