In the Govandi area’s Shivajinagar and Indira Nagar—Mumbai city’s populous and slum-dominated areas— Covid-19 protocols have gone for a toss. Life is going on, as usual, despite the government’s restrictions all across. In Govandi and Mankhurd, residents have scant regard for Covid-19 guidelines and do not seem too bothered by the pandemic. Amid such scenarios are three women—founders of Enrich Lives Foundation— who have taken up task of doing best for these slums; from Covid-19 awareness camps to Vaccination awareness programmes, they’re doing their best.
These women have initiated a campaign to inoculate slum dwellers in the 18-44 years age group. “People here are deprived of several basic things. We are helping them with several things from food, medication to vaccines. These people are extremely hesitant due to misinformation and the inability to afford vaccinations at private hospitals. We got inspired from door to door campaign. We have already given the jab to 150 people from Govandi slums and plan to vaccinate another 1,200 people from the Shivaji Nagar and further are working for 13 more slums.” says Samrudhi Chothani, one of the founders, and a lawyer by profession.
“To begin with, we started first with awareness campaigns for the public here who are just not so ready to get their jabs due to some myths. With the help of Switch India, we conducted vaccination awareness drives to clear their misconceptions and doubts.” says another co-founder, Shievani Upadhyay who’s also a financial analyst by profession.
Shedding light on how such maximum population of the maximum city has been ignored by authorities and, Rashmi Balwani who’s also a Business Entrepreneur, says, “We are just doing a bit. Authorities and all accountable people should come together to work for their betterment. Vaccination is an important ingredient to achieve herd immunity in Mumbai. All the local authorities should put some focus here because kids over here have not even taken basic vaccines like that of polio. While we are doing our best we want people’s support also for funds which can help us in a maximum way and lead Vaccination drive to every house in these slums.”