Offering a helping hand to Nepal quake victims

Sharjah

Upon knowing about the devastating earthquake in Nepal, the community youth group, Students for the Earth, took up the cause of helping quake-affected victims by initiating a campaign, ‘Nepal Quake Relief Drive’.

Venkatesan Sundar, who leads the charity and humanitarian activities in the group, and I, had two things very clear in our minds. We would accept only non-financial assistance in the form of goods and we wanted our collection to reach an authentic and well-recognised organisation to ensure that it genuinely reaches the needy in Nepal.

We decided to give the items to Emirates Red Crescent in Dubai. We announced our campaign on different social media channels. The announcement specified that food items should have at least a six-month expiry date and ready-to-eat items were preferred. We asked people for blankets, tents and basic toiletries, too.

We were very clear that we didn’t want volunteers to come and dump their unwanted clothes, as that’s not going to do any good for the people in tragedy-hit Nepal, where many are homeless, starving and have a lack of the basic necessities.

Soon after, members of our group, students and parents started contributing voluntarily by bringing various kinds of items, like rice, pulses, sugar, biscuits, rusks, cookies, blankets, bedsheets, basic toiletries like toothpaste and tooth brushes, foldable mattresses and milk powder. In total, we managed to collect items that filled 60 big cartons.

We made it a practice to click a picture of the volunteer dropping off his or her contribution and kept posting the same on our Facebook page. This further spread the campaign and many more people started calling us to find out about the drop-off points, which were my home in the Abu Shagara area of Sharjah and Sundar’s home in King Faisal Street, Sharjah.

We were impressed with the overwhelming response and generous contributions from people all across Sharjah. Volunteers did not hesitate to come, even at midnight, to drop off their contributions. Clearly, everyone is feeling the pain of this devastating quake and want to help in whichever way possible.

Bhavna Chandnani, one of the volunteers, said: ”The tragic quake in Nepal has really shaken me up and I wanted to help by providing the things they need.”

Mohit Talreja, another student volunteer, said: “Service to humanity is a great work of life. After seeing the immense destruction caused by the Nepal earthquake, I felt it to be my obligation to contribute.”

Sundar said: “It is so heartening to see people willingly coming and contributing for such a noble cause. We should help those who are affected by such fury of Nature. We are thankful to all for their contributions.”

At the end of the campaign, Sundar and I sorted the entire collection, packed them in separate cartons, got them loaded on to the truck and went to hand them over to Emirates Red Crescent. They were supposed to weigh the boxes, complete all the formalities and then ship them within a week.

— The reader is the president of the youth group Students for the Earth based in Sharjah.

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