In the best traditions of volunteerism, several youth have joined the collective to fight COVID-19, helping turn a grim situation around during the second wave.
And though all of them were affected by the pandemic one way or another, whether it was getting infected themselves or even losing a dear one, they navigated through their personal woes to sustain their contributions to containing the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hailing from diverse backgrounds, they intervened in a range of ways, from being involved in grassroots-level works to distributing essentials and even using digital tools to reinforce COVID-19-appropriate behaviour.
As early as April, when cases began to rise, several youth banded together to form the Pondicherry COVID Response, Health Information and Community Help Group on Facebook.
“At the beginning of the second wave around April, a few of us had the idea of creating a group to help residents, and collaborate with other volunteer networks across the States,” said Christina Joseph, the group’s admin.
Over the past months, the group has been consolidating and posting updates on official information regarding hospital bed availability, oxygen and ventilator support, and medicine and drug availability on the page.
The group now has over 250 members, with people sharing support and information, both across India and overseas. Special care is taken when sharing verified, scientifically backed COVID-19-related information or news updates for the people in both the vernacular (Tamil) and in French for the Francophone community, said Ms. Joseph, who was among the featured nominees in the “Dettol Salutes” campaign.
Meanwhile, a series of tweets that collated COVID-19 data, mapped trends and offered analytical cues from a Twitter handle caught the eye of the health administrators in the recent days.
“I do not have a background in statistical modelling, but connecting the dots from the available information and transforming them into comprehensible easy-to-use data is interesting, and is possible with the right tools,” says S. Sri Hari, an electrical engineering student from St Joseph’s College (Anna University) in Chennai.
Initially, he started making charts only for Chennai, the Nilgiris and Puducherry. When cases started to rise in the western parts of Tamil Nadu, he started posting daily updates for Coimbatore, Tiruppur, and Erode. As more people began to track his updates, he started covering the COVID-19 footprint across south India and the northeast. Mr. Hari is due to join the Arizona State University shortly, and has himself been infected with the virus.
“When I was infected, I used the quarantine time to develop charts. Many of my friends and relatives were affected by COVID-19, and some were even admitted to hospitals,” he said.
He got a sense of the public anxiety, seeing how the pandemic wore down his mother, as she hardly stepped out of the house for fear.
Since May 20, when he put up his first graph on social media, appreciation has poured in from unexpected people and places. “Unknown people using the data, appreciating it and sharing the information with others, has been heartwarming. I got a sense that I was doing something worthy when government officials who directly manage the pandemic appreciated my charts and analysis,” said the youngster, who has now developed a deep interest in public policy and biostatistics.
The Trust for Youth and Child Leadership (TYCL), which has a consultative status of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, has also mobilised youth to undertake a host of measures, from helping with mental health counselling and delivering essentials and food packets to patients in isolation across the city and suburbs.
“Many of our volunteers too were down with the virus. But as soon as it was safe to be back on the job, they did,” said R. Suresh Krishna, TYCL administrator.