Global Odia Volunteers: Lending A Helping Hand From Abroad

Global Odia Volunteers: Lending A Helping Hand From Abroad

The pandemic may have physically separated people but surprisingly, it has in a way brought communities together in showing love, care, concern and compassion for those caught in the spiral of COVID 19. Global Odia Volunteers (GOV) is one such community that has brought Odias from all over the world together to lend a helping hand to people reeling under the crisis not only in Odisha but across India.

Sanjay Dalai, an IT professional working with IBM in Irving, Texas, started this initiative with a few of his friends in April, 2021. One of Sanjay’s friends requested him to use his contacts to help get his father admitted to a hospital in Bhubaneswar during the peak of the second COVID 19 wave. After several phone calls, he managed to get his friend’s father admitted to a health facility. Things were getting better when all of a sudden the vitals crashed and the patient passed away. This incident was the trigger for creating a resource pool to help people in urgent need of medical care.

“Me and four of my friends in the US and Canada decided to create a resource centre that can be used by people affected by COVID 19 in Odisha and India. In order not to let people panic or feel helpless, we were prepared to do everything in our capacity to save each and every life. Be it food and medicine delivery to people in home isolation or arranging ICU beds, ventilators or oxygen, we are ready to extend every help possible. Besides, COVID 19, there is a new scare of Mucormycosis or black fungus. We are trying to arrange medicines for this new infection as well,” Sanjay informed.

The GOV now has around 140 members from different parts of the globe. Initially, the organisation started its services in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Balasore. As more and more people got to know about their work, they started getting calls from other parts of the State. Soon people from places like Faridabad, Mangalore and Puducherry started approaching them for help. Most of the people were looking for hospital beds, oxygen cylinders, Remdesivir injections and other kinds of help.   

Impressed by GOV’s work, eminent personalities such as IPS officer Basant Rath, dancer Saswat Joshi, anchor Sulagna Routroy, Padma Shri Sudarshan Patnaik, actors Sritam Das and Sukanta Rath and many others joined the organisation to do their bit for the needy. As the number of people seeking help increased, GOV started to look for more volunteers to work at the ground zero. Soon, NGOs started approaching them with their services. Today, the organisation boasts of a vast network of resources and volunteers ready to help people in distress round the clock.

Talking about the organisation’s modus operandi, Sanjay said, “Our strength is collating, archiving, updating and sharing data. We have been able to collect first-hand information from government sources which are being constantly updated. Data is available in plenty but the challenge is streamlining it and making it accessible to the public. This is the need of the hour and can help save thousands of lives by saving time. Many organisations are focusing on providing different things, but people need to know about them, their point of contacts and other details. Thankfully, we have been able to help people and save some lives during the second wave of the pandemic with our dedicated team.”

GOV has Odia volunteers from almost 20 countries including the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Nigeria. Most of the people willing to join the organisation are young. Sanjay said, “One of our volunteers, Maheswari, a +3 student from Puri district, approached us to contribute to our efforts. She wanted to be of some help to anyone who needed it. Initially, she compiled a data sheet with details of resources and emergency numbers of all the 30 districts of Odisha and shared it with us. This was impressive. Today, she is an integral part of our team. Young people like her keep us motivated at a time when it is easy to lose focus.”

With a strong database and contacts across Odisha and major cities of India, the GOV community has been able to help more than 170 families so far. Sharing an instance when the GOV team was able to arrange PPE kits for people in Sundargarh, Sanjay informed, “In Mahulpada village, there was an acute shortage of PPE kits. The villagers had been asking the BDO and the Tehsildar for PPE kits and oximeters for some time. Almost 91 people had tested positive for COVID 19 in 10 panchayats and ASHA workers were reluctant to venture into the villages due to lack of protective gear. Since there was no response from the local administration, they approached us. We reached out to the District Magistrate and the local MLA and within one and a half hours, all the necessary items reached the people.”

Similarly, the team was able to arrange an ICU bed for a critical patient in Bhubaneswar. “The family of the patient was not able to get him admitted to a private hospital which charged 1.75 lakhs rupees as upfront payment. Since the family didn’t have the entire amount, the members requested the authorities to get the patient admitted while they arranged the money. But the hospital refused. On being contacted, GOV had a word with the hospital management but the latter did not oblige. “We then called MP Aparajita Sarangi and sought her intervention. She responded within 15 minutes and we were able to save the patient’s life,” Sanjay said.

Currently, the GOV team is getting at least 15-20 SOS calls every day. “One of the biggest problems in rural India is the lack of mobile network and internet connectivity while most of our work is done over the internet. It is difficult for people from rural areas to reach us and we don’t want to miss out on any chance of saving more lives. That is why we are planning to introduce a hotline soon so that people can reach us anytime and from anywhere,” he informed.

With their selfless service, the volunteers of GOV are playing an important role in healing the scars of COVID 19 by reaching out to people in these distressing times.