Bhoomika Trust Relief Efforts in Chennai Floods 2015

Bhoomika’s Relief Efforts

Chennai cares by Bhoomika Trust

Helpline for rescue and distress calls
A 24 hours helpline to facilitate rescue of stranded people was set up by Bhoomika. Volunteers scoured social media for distress messages in addition to answering calls round the clock. Rescue was facilitated through the Government officials.

Immediate Relief
Networking with several other NGOs, Bhoomika was in the forefront offering relief through its massive community kitchens from 3rd Dec to 9th Dec distributing food every day. 1,90,000 food packets were distributed through volunteers to suburbs and remote locations. The Community kitchen was predominantly coordinated with volunteers, citizens of Chennai. It involved collaboration of cooks in one centre along with creation of individual eco-friendly dried leaf packages by volunteers. This was put together overnight and volunteer coordination done through social media. The large community kitchens had over 10000 volunteers clocking more than 1 lakh man hours. Awareness drives with local roadside eateries, which was a popular recourse since most kitchens were not functional, encouraging them to use donated chlorine tablets to purify their water also took place.

Relief kits to people going ‘Back home‘ from the camps
The devastation caused loss of materials at home which meant that they could not go back home to restart their lives. The immediate relief of cooked food was followed up with 70000 dislocated families being offered assistance to go back home with a 15 days ration kit. 5000 families were provided with vessel kits. All families were provided with cleaning material including bleaching powder to clean out the muck accumulated, post the rains.

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