The Humans of Gabriel Project: Meet Dennis Moses

We are delighted to introduce you to Dennis Moses, GPM's Program Manager! Get to know Dennis and read about his work with local communities in the Kalwa slums.

"Hello, My name is Dennis Moses and I am born and brought up in Mumbai. As a Program Coordinator with Gabriel Project I am responsible for volunteer engagement and ensuring the program runs smoothly! My role involves coordinating volunteer activities and helping them learn about the local culture and the programs in Kalwa they volunteer with. Currently I am also planning the COVID-19 awareness campaigns held in our Love 2 Learn classes and Shravan health centre.

Being a part of the Bene Israel community, it gives me immense pleasure to work with Gabriel Project as I get to meet so many Jewish people from across the world, and to observe "Tikkun Olam" and "Mitzvot" through the service I provide to the communities where we work.

Since Gabriel Project is my first job, the fresh perspective and energy which I bring to the organization is something that sets me apart. Having the opportunity to transform and touch the lives of people we work with is what attracted me to work with Gabriel Project and motivates me each day.

In my role supporting COVID- 19 response activities I have experienced how the lives of people living in the areas where we serve has been greatly impacted. A lot of people are forced to leave the community and go back to their villages, having fewer opportunities and insufficient funds. Children have been left without access to education and no choice other than to remain at home. Non-functioning schools, markets remaining closed, overcrowding of bus services due to railways being closed are some major challenges faced by the people in the community.

However the communities are resilient and the struggles of the COVID- 19 pandemic is enhancing people's patience and they are paying attention to how they can care for one another. "

The Humans of Gabriel Project: Meet Rekha Kumari

Hello and Namaste! 

I am Rekha Kumari and I am from Jharkhand, but currently living in Mumbai since 2015. Since 2017 I have work as a teacher in the Love2Learn classes of Gabriel Project at the Joshua Greenberger Learning Center. I teach grade four, and English for grades 5-to 8. 

Rekha (in blue) teaching her class

 

What do you love about your job? 

When I was young, there was a school near where I lived and I used to adore and admire the teachers teaching in the school. I always dreamed of being a teacher someday, and this dream led me to be a teacher with Gabriel Project. The happiness and eagerness of the children to learn something new is what drives me. To fulfill my dream, I completed my master’s degree in English literature and also finished my bachelor’s degree in Education.  When I came to Mumbai, I saw a lot of children are unable to read and write. Now I can see a lot of students improving and I am happy to see and be a part of this evolution.

 

What have been the greatest challenges during the pandemic? 

It has been very difficult during Covid-19, but Gabriel Project continues to impact the community a lot during this pandemic, providing food to the community and other essential items. Gabriel Project’s work has been so important for the people who lost their jobs. People in the slums have around 5 to 8 members in their family. People live with their children, parents, and their brother, his family and with unmarried sisters. With this this joint family system, the question of feeding and taking care of all the family members persists.

 

Despite the challenges people in the communities are resilient, and Gabriel Project programs work to maximize this. While conducting Covid-19 awareness campaign, we came across a boy who told us that his father is an alcoholic and his mother is a vegetable vendor. Since the trains are not working, she cannot go to collect and sell vegetables. To support her family, she started working in a Covid-19 rehabilitation centre. She feels happy to see the patients recuperating and going back home with a smile on their face.

Please consider contributing to our work and join Rekha and the rest of the dedicated GPM staff in making an impact to so many. https://www.gabrielprojectmumbai.org/donate

GPM Launches Infant Malnutrition Program in Remote Villages

 GPM delivered 17 large boxes of medicines and vitamins this week to treat 256 severely malnourished children in the tribal district of Mokhada. The delivery to the Integrated Child Development Services for the first month of malnutrition treatment of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) and Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM) infants in remote rural Maharashtra marks the launch of the GPM ‘Bal Balwan – Healthy Child Mission’.

The program was devised in collaboration between GPM and local authorities in response to the COVID-19 lockdown and food crisis that ensued in remote areas of Maharashtra.

Mokhada Government Project Officer Kuldip Jadhav, District Health Officer Doctor Kishor Desale and Local Health Officers Suvarna Patil and Uma Chaudhari were very pleased to receive the life-sustaining medicines that will be delivered to the seven division ‘beats’ of the Mokhada District (Taluka) and prepared for the medicine’s immediate distribution.

"We are most grateful to Gabriel Project for donating these vitamins for 250 SAM and MAM children in the entire Mokhada taluk," said ICDS Project Officer Kuldeep Jadhav. "This will help save the children's lives." 

GPM staff Kenneth Dsouza, Thaiza Dias, and Hemant Pawar joined village ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) worker Maya Gade in the first two home visits and treated two moderately malnourished babies. ASHA workers gave a small nutrition training to the children’s parents directing them on the use of the monthly medicine regimen.

GPM will be monitoring and evaluating the malnutrition program along with government health officials for the upcoming year to treat the 259 children in the district and, hopefully eradicate infant malnutrition in the area.

This life-saving program relies on the generosity of donors like you. Please consider supporting this program! 

To support the GPM Emergency COVID-19 Response Fund, please click here: https://www.gabrielprojectmumbai.org/donate

Hebrew University International Development Magazine 2020 article by GPM

The Hebrew University's Glocal International Development Magazine 2020 featured an article by GPM staff titled "Climate Change, Urban Migration, and Tribal Communities: a Cycle of Marginalization". The article covers the Katkari tribal group living in several villages where GPM operates.

Below is an excerpt of the article. Select HERE to read the full article. 

"Katkaris are subjected to seasonal food insecurity even in better years; more often, they face prolonged food insecurity and scarcity, as well as micro-nutrient deficiencies and malnutrition. 47% of households reported facing food shortages during a particular season or time in the previous year.7 The main meal of the day for most Katkaris (men, women and children) is the evening meal, which they cook after returning from working in the fields. As their socio–economic standing worsens, so too their health and nutrition status often times propelling ongoing migration to the urban slum areas.

As an already vulnerable group in India, the Katkari tribe has suffered from lack of access to resources for centuries. This situation has been exacerbated by the impact of climate change. Climate change has had a dramatic impact on the Katkari tribe, resulting in prolonged migration, lack of access to education, child labor, all with detrimental ramifications for community health. The negative effects of climate change on

the Katkari people can also be seen among many other tribes in India, and among marginalized communities around the world."

To continue the education of Katkari children, GPM pays for their stay in
the village while their parents migrate for half a year for work.

Supporting Parents During COVID-19 in the slums of Mumbai

An estimated 1.3 billion children worldwide are out of school during COVID-19 lock-downs – which puts extra strain on parents who are often already struggling with restrictions and pressures.  To address this urgent problem, GPM introduced a new parenting workshop to support parents in the slums of Mumbai. The program, which was created by researchers at the University of Oxford and was endorsed by UNICEF, WHO, the CDC and other organizations working on the pandemic, aims to provide parents with special tools and skills for working with children during lock-down. The open-source COVID-19 parenting resources have helped over 50 million families in 179 countries worldwide thus far during the pandemic. GPM has adopted the parenting program and is delivering the program in Kalwa in the languages of Hindi and Marathi. The program follows guidelines of social distancing and face-masks, works with only ten people in a room at a time twice a day, and teaches parents about a variety of crucial topics related to home-schooling and hygiene. Participants also receive hygiene materials such as soap and face-masks, as well as activity sheets for the whole family. “Parents and caregivers of children are heroes of the COVID-19 epidemic,” said Professor Lucie Cluver who created the program along with Dr Jamie Lachman from University of Oxford. “These past few months have pushed every family to its limits, and parents deserve the best evidence-based support.” "The parents really appreciate the parenting ideas provided in the sessions, and we all enjoy sharing our thoughts and experiences during these challenging times," said Dennis Moses who is running the program in Kalwa.  GPM anticipates reaching hundreds of parents, and is planning to expand the program in the villages of Ashte in remote rural Maharashtra where parents also need resources and support during the pandemic.

The scope of starvation during COVID-19 lock-down is worse than we thought

Thousands of people in remote rural villages of Maharashtra, India, are on the verge of starvation as a result of the COVID-19 lock-down, a new study on the issue has found. A GPM survey of 80,000 residents of the taluka/district of Mokhada found 2,250 families – 12.5% of the population – are living in immediate dire threat of starvation due to the conditions of lock-down. This is primarily a result of extended periods of having no livelihood due to being lock-down.

The study was conducted by GPM staff over a ten-day period in May among farmers in the Mokhada region, most of whom are from the Katkari tribe. 

Following the alarming findings of the survey, GPM reached out to several foundations and corporations to establish partnership initiatives to address this urgent life-threatening situation. As a result, the following responses have been initiated: 

• Providing basic supplies. Sir Ness Wadia Foundation supplied GPM with basic groceries and supplies for an initial 350 families – such as lentils, rice, beans, pules, flour, jaggery, and oil—which GPM has been distributing.

• Adopting families. JM Financials has agreed to adopt an initial 50 families from the list of needy families in villages surveyed by GPM, covering five village hamlets, and is directly providing them with their needs. The Goonj Foundation has also adopted an initial pilot of 10 families and is providing for them directly. 

• Protecting from COVID-19. The Godrej Group has provided 18,000 bars of soap which has been distributed, along with face masks that the GPM women’s empowerment collective has produced. 

This ongoing emergency COVID-19 relief project has been made possible thanks to the generous support from the following friends: 

• The Good People Fund
• Righteous Crowd
• Estelle Friedman Gervis Charitable Foundation
• OLAM
• Sundara Fund
• And other generous anonymous sources

And the support of so many donors and friends who simply want to alleviate the suffering of those most vulnerable during the pandemic.

You can read more about our COVID-19 emergency relief work HERE

GPM women's sewing collective prevents the spread of COVID-19

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread around the world the widespread lock-downs are having devastating effects on communities in the slums and under-served villages; and the damage is extensive in low-resource communities throughout India.

Government regulations require all citizens to wear face-masks to prevent the spread of the virus in the hope that this step, along with social distancing, will curtail the spread of COVID-19.

Last year Gabriel Project Mumbai, with the support of the Good People Fund, started a woman’s sewing collective - called Tribal Threads - for women living in slums and remote tribal villages. These women receive livelihood for their sewing skills; empowering themselves economically while looking after their families and community.

As the COVID-19 pandemic started we transported all of our sewing machines to the homes of the women who are under general lock-down. Then our team tried several face-mask designs and created awesome durable washable cloth face-masks for adults and children.

15 women in 3 rural villages and 1 urban slum started sewing these face-masks and so far we have distributed thousands of face-masks to COVID-19 designated rural government hospitals, medical staff at primary health care centers, the police force and hundreds of people living poverty stricken communities.

The women are in the process of sewing 14,000 face masks in the next 6 weeks including a 6,000-unit order to supply an entire district police force and medical support personnel who are at the front-lines of the battle against the spread of COVID-19.

We are happy that our efforts are saving lives and supporting the families of the women’s collective during these trying times.

Enjoy this clip of the women of Tribal Threads while they make a face- mask every five minutes!

Good News for a 3 Year-old, COVID-19 free!

Amid our fight to providing urgent COVID-19 assistance, we’re delighted to share some good news! GPM operates in rural tribal areas and since the COVID-19 outbreak and we have been helping a rural hospital in Dahanu, in western Maharashtra. The Dahanu hospital’s first corona-virus patient, a three-year-old girl called Priya, has been released in good health after a full recovery! It’s absolutely heartwarming to see the Priya with her parents receiving the COVID-19 recovery

certificate alongside her doctors. This is an encouraging story that shows us why we need to continue to fight a virus which threatens to ravage the health and livelihoods of low-resource communities in India.

Many rural hospitals lack the tools needed to look after their vulnerable communities, however with GPM’s support, this hospital is now better prepared to combat COVID-19’s deadly impact.

GPM provided the medical staff with essential equipment and installed basic hygiene facilities to reduce the spread of the corona virus within the fragile hospital population. Our work in the community has a profound impact, and with your help this little girl can be the first of many walking healthy out the hospital door to return to their family.

Below is a rundown of the essential, life-saving measures introduced at the hospital in Dahanu by GPM:

• Building hand-washing stations: We’ve installed a designated hand washing station with seven faucets which is now used before any person enters the hospital.
• Preventing the spread of COVID19: GPM has provided 25 liters of hand sanitizer and 250 bars of soap to ensure that the hospital is able to provide the most basic protection.
• Meals for medical staff: Every day we’re providing freshly-cooked meals for overworked doctors, nurses and medical support staff (our team's currently cooked up 800 meals!). These medical staff are at the front-lines of the fight against COVID-19!
• Protecting medical staff: GPM's women's sewing collective, Tribal Threads, has sewed thousands of washable cloth face-masks to ensure that doctors and nurses at hospitals have basic personal protective equipment (150 masks were given to the hospital in Dahanu).
• Informing the community: We’ve created posters and flyers and displayed key information about COVID-19 outside the hospitals, and throughout the villages and slums, to encourage local people to adopt good habits and reduce their risk of infection.

We are grateful to the hundreds of people who are donating to this cause and to the organizations that are funding this campaign alongside our life-saving nutrition program for starving families. Much thanks go to The Good People Fund, OLAM, The Estelle Friedman Gervis Family Foundation, Sundara Fund and others.

You can donate here to this emergency COVID-19 response fund: https://rootfunding.com/campaigns/gpm_corona_virus_campaign

GPM Emergency CoVER: Urgently preventing the spread of Corona virus in the slums of Mumbai

Dear Friend, Like all global emergencies, the Corona virus is most perilous for vulnerable populations. For the people living in the Kalwa slum in India, where 200,000 people are crammed into tiny huts and have few communal resources, the pandemic threatens to be lethal.  In response to this imminent threat, GPM – which operates the only medical clinic in the community – is launching operation CoVER . Corona Virus Emergency Response to prevent the spread of the Corona virus in the slum.  The CoVER campaign has a 7-prong attack in curtailing the spread of the COVID-19 virus: 1. Expand medical services. Our Shravan Medical Center, the only community health care center in the slums, for the foreseeable future, will increase its operating hours with all medical staff voluntarily agreeing to help their community. 2. Launch an awareness campaign. In line with government health directives large bill boards in Hindi will be on display outside the centrally located medical clinic explaining the preventive steps all residents can take to curb the spread of the virus. 3. Provide accessible information. We will erect large information banners with vital information and instructions outside all our centers in the slums 4. Distribute free soap. Thousands of hygienic hand-made soaps will be made by our Sundar India soap initiative and given out for free with an explanation on how hand-washing is one of the best methods of stopping the spread of the virus 5. Teach preventive measures. Along with the soap each person will receive a handout in Hindi with additional precautions each family in the community could take to protect their household. 6. Educate schoolchildren. All children in our school will receive a special 6-page fun and educational comic book made by the Government of India that details ways to stay healthy and prevent the spread of the virus. 7. Monitor children’s temperature. While our school (The Joshua Greenberger Learning Center) will be officially closed, as per government directions, we will have infrared non-contact thermometers at the school (as well as our health center) to help diagnose children with fever. In other measures, we have temporarily closed down all our women’s collectives, our nutrition program, and our school. We hope to continue to be able to support the families that rely on this work even during the crisis.  Meanwhile, our safe drinking water facility and our medical center will be fully operational because they provide invaluable health and hygiene services to prevent the spread of the virus among the most vulnerable in the community.  We are appealing to you for urgent assistance to ensure that the Corona virus pandemic does not spread through the slums, and that the community continues to have the resources that they need to survive. Please help support the safe drinking water, the medical clinic, and the emergency measures that we are taking to prevent the Corona virus from engulfing the Kalwa slum. Please donate here: https://rootfunding.com/campaigns/gpm_corona_virus_campaign

With much thanks and gratitude and wishing you all good health, Jacob Sztokman jacob@gabrielprojectmumbai.org * All donations to Gabriel Project Mumbai is US 501(c)(3) tax-exempt EIN# 45-4541556