I worked as a state head for the COVID program of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s Youth Action Hub of India
For my other work as part of the international projects team of the hub, please visit- https://nalinjayaswal.com/yah/
Seeing all the devastation, the hub started a youth program for remote assistance to patients. This entailed calling hospitals and resource persons to update the status of availability of beds/Oxygen/masks/medicine on our social media channels for helping patients save time.
I started my journey in the COVID relief program in the initial phase of the program when the volunteers were taken from within YAH itself. I continued my journey till the end of the program towards the end of the second wave of COVID.
Initially I was a bit inactive primarily due to being affected by COVID-19 and COVID Pneumonia myself. During this phase, the hub helped me immensely to get COVID resources for my own family.
A primary challenge during this phase was dealing with the nature of leads. Many leads turned out to be exhausted within hours, and others were extremely difficult to reach out to. All of this discouragement however used to wash away as soon as a fresh working lead was found.
When I returned to volunteer, the group was in the expansion phase. I was given charge of the Uttarakhand state. It was a challenge to create a structure around a state we knew little about, however using information available online we were able to come up with a database of resources, and also identify critical resources and shortages in the state.
This was also the period where we developed a working system and structure. The excel data sheet of resources would be updated by the champs, the verified resources sent on the group in a certain format, and then forwarded to the social media group with appropriate tags.
It was also a challenge to encourage the volunteers. We dealt with hordes of inactive volunteers and had numerous cycles of recruitment and orientations. However, we did know how to deal with them as we ourselves had dealt with the pressure and emotions with the lead verification process. Constant support and encouragement helped motivate the people who were active.
The entire feeling and experience of being involved was extremely heart touching. The people I worked with were absolutely amazing and the connect we built was on a very deep level. The relief group calls and efforts provided a much needed escape and platform to air our feelings out. It helped to know everyone was in the same boat.
Apart from the teamwork, the sheer pleasure and satisfaction derived from helping someone in these trying times were motivation enough to keep going. The entire program helped generate a feeling of control in this pandemic.
In the end, we had expanded to 7 states and had a network of 100 volunteers working with us.
