Our efforts during the Covid-19 outbreak

As the world currently faces a pandemic situation, it is everyone’s duty to help the society as much as they can from the situation they are in. Here’s an update on what we have been doing from Siraj Mia Memorial Foundation (Est. 2005) for the last 1 month.

What have we done so far?

• When the disease first arrived in Bangladesh, everyone was very late to react and continued working and living their lives as normal. From our foundation, we held meetings and realized that masks were the first line of defense against Covid-19. We then distributed 10,000 triple layered surgical masks in Badda.

• Slowly, the country started to close and lock-downs were getting imposed. The first ones to be affected were the day laborers, rikshaw pullers and other people from low income professions. Since these people have almost little to no savings, they were seen on the roads even after lock-downs to earn their daily income. To avoid this, we distributed 110 tonnes of rice alongside other essentials which a family of 4 can survive on for 14 days (At that time, the government had imposed a 2 weeks lock-down to curb the virus so we calculated the proportions according to that being optimistic the country will become normal again in 2 weeks)

• As weeks went by, many companies and factories started to let go off employees as there was no production, hence no revenue coming in for the company. The financial situation for the lower class has been getting worse everyday and now the middle class people were starting to feel the pinch. They’re the people who work for a living but they unfortunately became the victim of bad circumstances where they were fired and could not find a new job as everything remained closed. We had a lengthy meeting with our board regarding how our foundation can stand beside the middle class and we’ve decided on this. We set up boxes in front of Siraj Mia Memorial Model school which is also under the Siraj Mia Memorial foundation. And in those boxes, people can deposit their applications or letters writing their addresses and our foundation will deliver 10 days of essentials to their home maintaining anonymity (we know how important this is to everyone). Each applicant can apply again every 10 days and our foundation will deliver 10 days worth of essentials to their door maintaining anonymity every time.

• Update: As of 20th April 2020, Siraj Mia Memorial Foundation has given away 200 tonnes of essentials to over 6000 families.

Ramadan

The holy month of Ramadan is just 2 days away and it is usually the most festive time of the year. This year however, it is clear that the scenario will be very different. From our foundation, we have very thoughtfully created a list of essentials so that the people we can reach do not have to go out the entire month. Here’s the list of supplies we plan on distributing for Ramadan.

Our activities in pictures