Community Spotlight Covid19 Response – Humano Welfare Trust

Humano Welfare Trust is an organisation that came up in response to the Covid crisis to help the homeless, daily wage earners, tourists locket up in various hotel’s, stranded travellers etc. while also supporting migrants who wished to travel back home by  handling packing and distribution of food packets to them.

1. What is the mission of the Humano Welfare Trust? When were you first established as an organization?

Ans: The main objective of the Humano welfare trust is a economic upliftment, educational empowerment, health promotion, women empowerment, social reformation, communal harmony, media services, Governance support etc. and work towards the upliftment of marginalized sections of the society for their total empowerment and has been working since a decade in association with various organisations.

2. What type of projects was the  Humano Welfare Trust working on prior to Covid19

Ans:  All such projects which are listed in our objectives were taken up all these years

3. We understand that the Humano Welfare Trust stepped up to support vulnerable people throughout this quarantine period. Can you explain a bit more about how you guys mobilized to offer your support, and which communities you worked with throughout the lockdown?

Ans: During Janata curfew in 22nd March 2020 where all the activities were closed for full day and whole nation was stand still and later in the evening when junta curfew was lifted our Volunteers visited some of the pockets in Margao city and found out that hundreds of homeless, daily wage earners, Tourists locket up in various hotel’s, stranded travellers etc. where hungry whole day without a single bite of food, since all the food outlets were shut, later we all moved on to our places and cooked meals with whatever available groceries and served all of them and it continued until all were put up in shelter home by the administration and later when Lockdown kept on continuing there were innumerable people left out without work and lost their source of income due to which they were facing difficulties for their survival and later we stepped in and provided them dry ration for their families until they were back in their daily routine source of income.
4. What were some of the difficulties you faced while trying to do this work?

Ans: There were no major difficulties as we had full support of volunteers from an organisation like popular front of India and Serving Humanity

5. What was the most rewarding part of this experience?

Ans: Seeing the signs of relief and lots of blessing from the beneficiary’s

6. How many migrants/day laborers did you feed/support throughout this whole process?
Ans: We have provided cooked meals to more than 10,000 people and dry ration as well to equal number of families

7. We understand you supported the migrants looking to travel home via the Shramik Trains. Can you explain what that process looked like? What type of support did the travelers need?

Ans: For Shramik train there were lots of support administration seeked from Volunteers groups, we helped them in providing data of migrants intending to travel to their native places. Apart from that along with the material procurement support from Susang Covid group we completely  handled packing and distribution of food packets to the migrants on their onward journey.

8. How many trains and passengers did you see travel back home?

Ans: When we stepped in we helped around 35,000 migrants travelled in around 30 trains

9. What do hope will be the biggest lesson in all of this?

Ans: Waiting for the best time

10. What is a common misconception you hear a lot about the communities you are serving that you wish you could correct?

Ans: Most of the people were unaware about the situation and no knowledge about the pandemic