Since most work has moved online, World Vision field staff are engaging children and parents in online calls to not only promote health, hygiene and parenting messages, but also to enquire about their well-being and understand their concerns amidst the lockdown.
From seven cities (Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Guwahati, Hyderabad and Bangalore), we connected with a few children in their homes to understand how they, their families and communities were faring in these times.
The recurring issues that kids brought up were a lack of food and ration supplies, loss of wages because of unemployment of their parents, a general sense of boredom because of not being able to go out and play or meet their friends and worries about pending exams and missing out on school curriculum. Our children assured us that they were practicing social distancing but were worried about other people in their community who weren’t taking things as seriously.
On a positive note, a lot of them were happy that they now got to spend a lot of time with their parents and siblings. Many help out with household chores and are also getting time to pursue their hobbies like drawing, doing arts and craft or playing other indoor games with their siblings.

Meet our heroes of the hour! Ibtasan, Arshi and Farzana were part of World Vision India’s children’s club and later went on to start their own NGO, Anughrah Peace Foundation. Today’s these young adults are the first responders in their community after the lockdown. They have provided food 200 to 250 people in 5 to 6 locations.

In partnership with Mahindra World City, we distributed dry ration to Gummidipoondi Town Panchayat, Tamil Nadu. We distributed dry ration kits for 500 families. Each kit has enough food to feed a family for around 15 days.

It's been more than 40 days since we have started responding to the COVID-19 crisis. We have been actively providing cooked food, dry ration, masks, gloves and handwashing supplies to families, health centres and other departments across the country.