The Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
You would, by now, have read or seen the devastating impacts of the COVID pandemic in India this past month. This wave is only beginning. By August of this year, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation forecasts over one million people will die of COVID in India alone. This moment calls for a response that exceeds this moment.
As the COVID crisis moves from India’s cities into its villages, we write to you today to consider donating whatever you can to AID India, an organization we have followed for some time (and was recently featured on CNN and the New York Times). AID’s ethical, long term partnerships, social justice principles, and their extensive social infrastructure in rural areas (which host most of India’s population and little of its health infrastructure), makes them a particularly good organization to support at this time.
AID India are sponsoring several ongoing projects to address the pandemic that would benefit from your support. They include five COVID care centers in the Sundarbans, grocery support for 1200 villages in Tamil Nadu,a COVID call center for rural Chhattisgarh, and a massive dispatch of PPE, oximeters, oxygen concentrators and thermometers to rural grassroots organizations in several states, to name just a few.
To support this work, you could make a tax-exempt donation directly on their website: https://aidindia.org/donate/covid-relief-fund/. If you have any questions about AID India, or would like to volunteer with the organization, you can sign up at https://aidindia.org/volunteer/
Thank you for your attention and care in these difficult times. We look forward to hearing from you.
Our best wishes and thanks
Ania Loomba
University of Pennsylvania AID India COVID Response Team
PS. To read more about stories from the ground in India, you may follow AID India’s updated feed at https://aidindia.org/stories-from-the-ground/ or on twitter @aidindia.Or watch this video where Dr. Priyadarsh explains the challenges of fighting covid from his hospital in rural Chhattisgarh.