A group of people, led by a schoolteacher, is providing healthy food, including dry fruits to over 100 children living on the city’s pavements.
The initiative is spearheaded by S. Prabhakaran, a Tamil teacher in KENC Government Higher Secondary School in Manavala Nagar, Tiruvallur.
“We found that the children did not have access to nutritious food. Some of them relied on noon-meal schemes when they used to attend schools. Since they are closed now, they do not get the required nutrition,” said Mr. Prabhakaran, who has provided dry rations to 200 children in his own school.
The group identifies the homeless children with the help of the Information and Resource Centre for the Deprived Urban Communities (IRCDUC). Then they collect money from relatives and friends and have been providing fruit, dry fruits and sathu maavu (multi-grain powder ) to the children.
“We have been providing food to children in Parry’s and Egmore. We visit them every week and provide them the food and we can see the happiness in the eyes. This makes us happy too,” said Ms. Deepa, an advocate.
Mr. Prabhakaran said the Greater Chennai Corporation also helped them a lot by providing the identity card and vehicle pass for carrying out relief distribution.
“We are also planning to provide eggs to the children. A few weeks ago, we helped a migrant family. The woman had delivered twins and they were underweight. We provided milk and diapers for 50 days. The family went to Jharkhand and thanked us,” he recalled.
Vanessa Peter, policy researcher, IRCDUC, said that the entire relief process was co-ordinated by members of the homeless community. “They ensured personal distancing norms were followed in the distribution process,” she said.