Update on our Covid Surge Impact Alliance

It's over 5 weeks since we start our helpline to support patients/attenders find the most relevant resources in the shortest amount of time. We also built the largest dataset of resources and gave them away to all the online websites/bots and influencers we knew.

While we will never be able to count the actual number of people who found our effort to have helped them out of agony and danger, we know for a fact that our helpline alone has processed close to 5000 calls and supported half of them at a very critical stage needing either a hospital bed, oxygen/oxygen facility. This was possible due to a ground-up collaboration effort with so many non-profits, businesses and the government itself.

A lot of our analysis and forecasting has gone into supporting the decision making by authorities and our on-ground implementation of isolation centres and oxygen supply resources, and most of all, a grand plan in the offing to prepare ourselves for the immediate future.

But this is not all; since we're an alliance and a team of people almost entirely led by women instead of individual heroes, we've prioritised 'process over drama, improvisation over giving up, being solution-oriented over hyping gloom and doom. All of our work is backed with real-time data collected and processed by ourselves and this large army of 550 volunteers, and an incredible set of donors who kept pouring in resources whenever we needed.

I cannot recollect how many times and how many folks broke down and supported each other. I know we were not loud enough and had no fancy technology. I know many of our SOS calls and messages to CSR's, philanthropists and authorities went unanswered or are still under process.

Yet, what we are carrying ahead is not just the routine experiences; each volunteer and partner has experienced what disaster management looks like, what the power of collaborative work means, and most importantly, an introduction to systems-change work. Yet a sense of confidence prevails amidst this chaos at the alliance, and we only hope that you shall join us in the future because none of us is safe until we ALL are safe.

Thank you if you've contributed your part to this work. You know who you are, please share it ahead. Here's one of the coverages from last week