What started as a small drive to help a few hundred Indian students facing hardships in the US, has now snowballed into a large and organised movement, benefiting over 1,500 students already.
Most of the beneficiaries turned out to be girl students under the initiative called ‘Meri Zimmedari’, Sudheer Bandigari, Hyderabadi data engineer in Richmond, Virginia, said.
A few weeks ago, Mr. Sudheer and fellow Indians, mostly students or fresh graduates, had started out with an online drive to help students who are unable to work and fend for themselves during the COVID-19 crisis in the US. While he expected requests from about 200 students, more than a thousand requests poured in within a week of making the online application live.
The majority of requests were coming from girl students who couldn’t work because of the pandemic, and had no easy access to grocery where they stay.
Mr. Sudheer, who is also the president of the Indian Overseas Youth Congress, raised funds by making a video appeal and said that they distributed groceries to Indian students living in 29 different states of the US. Another 700 requests were pending and arrangements were being made to help them as well.
He said that a lot of students were unable to ask their parents back in India for financial help at this time because many of them are into business, laid off or have not received their full salaries, including government employees.
The group hence decided to create bags of groceries with Indian staples such as rice, lentils, five varieties of vegetables, spices, breakfast cereals and some snacks for a group of four students at their doorstep to keep on for at least a month. Each bag costs at least US $100.
“Our volunteers, mostly students who applied for assistance, from each state are delivering groceries to students. We place an order with the nearest store, and pay them in advance, which are later picked up the Indian youth to delivery them to their fellow countrymen in need,” Mr. Sudheer said.
The rate of new requests is more than 100 per day making their prediction around 3,000 requests in the next one week.
“Our goal is to help every student who reaches out for help in our limited capacity. We have donated money for this purpose but in order to continue to help the student community, we also initiated the fund raising campaign,” the youngster said.
“My friend who is away from her usual university place, faced major issues, the immediate being no food, and loneliness, as she knows no one there. Meri Zimmedari team helped her out with the basic food to eat and has stuck by her side like a family, giving whole hearted support during this catastrophic situation,” said Sushmita, a student of New York Institute of Technology, who hails from Bhopal.
That aside, the team is also offering legal advice to students who are facing visa related issues at a time when no conventional counselling is available. They have also requested the governors of respective states in the US for fractional payment under CARE and FEMA aid for those who work on campus.
The ‘Meri Zimmedari’ team has also reached out to Deputy Consul General for India in USA to arrange accommodation for a few Indian students who are facing problems for their stay as some universities asked students to vacate the university in order to ensure the virus don’t spread among students.
