SEEDS and Honeywell have joined forces to distribute food kits that will provide 10.7 million meals across nine cities to people who have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. These include daily wagers, contract workers, and migrant population who have been displaced because of the lockdown.
While phase-1 of the distribution drive provided around 3.7 million meals across five cities, in phase-2, this CSR partnership of NGO SEEDS and Honeywell aims to provide an additional 7 million meals across nine cities: Delhi, Gurugram, Bengaluru, Pune, Madurai, Haridwar, Dehradun, Chennai, and Hyderabad. Cumulatively, this multi-city outreach will cover 1.78 lakh people.
At the beginning of the countrywide lockdown, there was a huge outpouring of support for the displaced and marginalized. These efforts have come down significantly since the country began to restart and reopen. However, there are large swathes of the population – especially migrant workers and trans women – that continue to suffer from job losses and depleted savings.
Manu Gupta, Co-Founder, SEEDS said, “We are committed to reaching out to the bottom 1% most vulnerable communities during any crisis. Though the country is currently under the unlock phase, there are still communities struggling against daily hardships. SEEDS continues to reach out to such communities for the sixth month running and is committed to carry out its support work until they can safely come out of the current crisis.”
Each food kit comprises rice, wheat flour, sugar, pulses, cooking oil, and salt.
Dr. Akshay Bellare, President, Honeywell India, said, “The pandemic has impacted a large population of India. Honeywell has actively engaged in supporting communities during this crisis by undertaking ration distribution to support people in need of basic amenities. In the last few months, the CSR team of Honeywell reached out to five cities and offered 12,300 relief packages to 61,500 people. We are doing yet another drive to offer basic food rations across multiple cities in support of communities.”
