Activities Conducted During the time of Covid-19 Pandemic

Then Covid-19 struck the world with full force. The global pandemic presents a crisis on a scale many of us have never experienced before. The toll it has taken on human life is heartbreaking. India went on total lockdown from March 20, 2020. At Veerni, we reacted quickly. There is no blueprint showing how to deal with a crisis like this, but within just a few hours we had adjusted our operations to address the situation at hand. March 20th, 2020 all 110 Veerni girls – 90 from the Veerni Institute and 20 from Veerni Balika, were sent home with their parents.

Throughout the year Veerni has taken new initiatives to make sure the Veerni girls remain in close contact with their school educational programs.

The Veerni Team started educational programs like “Schools at Doorstep” and “Digital Education” to make sure girls would continue their education while back at home. In the "School at Doorstep program" the Team visited villages to provide all the girls with learning materials and worksheets. In the “Digital Education Program” the girls were provided with “Tablets”.

We at Veerni have always been highly aware of our responsibility towards the nation and therefore we also provided all possible support to India’s response to the COVID-19 challenge in all fields of disability. So, in this challenging year, Veerni has temporarily adapted its services to help other needy people to ensure access to food and health.

Under Veerni’s “Health Outreach Program”, the Veerni staff provided guidance and awareness to the villages so that they could stay safe. At the beginning of the pandemic, the immediate priorities were to ensure awareness and understanding of the Coronavirus. Veerni teams visited villages to ensure understanding and awareness of Covid-19 amongst the villagers so that they would know how to protect themselves and their families. Veerni teams provided general information about Covid-19 and continuously repeated which actions had to be taken in order to prevent the spread of the virus. The Veerni staff also distributed information leaflets to the villagers and shared health advice and information.

In January 2021, we managed to start working once again in the Institute and with great success. We followed all government guidelines in order to re-open both the Veerni Institute and Veerni Balika. To protect our girls from the Covid-19 virus a decision was taken to conduct all classes on-site at the Institute. The school agreed to send teachers to Veerni to conduct all classes inside the building. All ground floor rooms of the Institute were converted into classrooms. The girls received greater personal attention which helped to boost their studying capabilities and they were all extremely happy to be back in the Veerni Institute.