MATTRESS DONATION AFTER THE FLOODS

About this project

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The state of Kerala faced major floods the likes which was not seen for over a hundred years. All major rivers in Kerala overflowed and the Kuttanad region bore the brunt since the Vembanad lake was the catchment point for two major rivers. The region already is prone to floods as the land was reclaimed from the Vembanad lake but this flood caused most houses to be totally underwater. Almost 100,000 people had to be displaced to makeshift camps to prevent loss of lives. After the water receded, people came back to clean the slush caused by the floods as well as to salvage their household items which they could not rush to safety. ARRT Foundation realized that mattresses were salvaged beyond repaid in most homes and the lower socio economic stature of the population resulted in people not being able to buy new mattresses. 

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Volunteers of the ARRT Foundation did door to door due diligence and provided mattresses to homes which did not even have one. Although most homes faced damage, due to paucity of funds we had to be very discriminative in selecting the recipients and we had to fix a criteria of checking the recipients source of income before allotting mattresses.

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Names of Donors

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The funding was provided friends and well-wishers to start with. They in turn posted on social media the work which was being done which included volunteers themselves posting the situation on the ground on their social media. This resulted in more and more people outside the known circle participating in the donation process as well as being volunteers on the ground.

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Outcome

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Totally we were able to provide mattresses to 600 homes in the Panchayat. Some of the recipients were so financially struggling that they did not even have a mattress before the floods and a mattress was a prized possession in their homes. We made sure that every house in Kavalam Panchayat had at least one mattress in their homes.

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