Hello Wikimedians,
We are all passing through a very difficult time as the second wave of
COVID-19 has hit hard throughout the country. It is a bitter and hard truth
that many of us have lost our loved ones, close friends, relatives,
neighbours already. Some of us have faced economic difficulties due to loss
of jobs, losses in businesses, huge hospitalization expenses etc.
In the midst of this crisis, a support program has been initiated to
provide some reliefs to our Wikimedia volunteers residing in India. The
program will support the following -
1. Reimbursement of vaccination costs
2. Sending of COVID-19 protection kits
3. Counseling by experts
The support will be provided by CIS-A2K. The vaccination expenses will be
reimbursed from as early as today or tomorrow. The COVID-19 protection kits
will get couriered within a week or more, depending on various logistical
factors. The team will try to support the more vulnerable section of the
community first.
Volunteers are requested to fill up this Google Form to request for support
-
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScYcjEeuT7vUxP3NJg7KfIiZaude9IXLyC…
Please note that all your personal raw information will be kept private and
will not be shared publicly with anybody. Only the persons from CIS-A2K who
will be sending you the support will get access to your information to
process your request. After 120 days of processing, your raw information
will be deleted or aggregated.
If you do not need this kind of support but you know some volunteers from
your community who are in dire need, you can nominate them too through this
form or mail the support team directly. Affiliate contacts and community
leaders are also kindly requested to help identify the volunteers who need
the support the most.
You can find more details about the support program here -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_support_for_Wikimedians/India
The support team would also like to emphasise that,
- there might be some delay in sending support as there are lockdowns in
different parts of the country and there is scarcity or non-availability of
different items in the market,
- there might be some unintentional or unexpected errors from the team,
as this is the first time, this kind of support is being set up for Indian
Wikimedia volunteers and the team does not have prior experience to deal
with this kind of global health situation before,
- the team members are also facing the same critical situation like
everyone else; there are possibilities that they can become sick sooner or
later, which might hamper the support to some extent.
That's why, the team would like to request you to understand the
limitations and assume good faith that any failure to serve sometimes would
be due to situations beyond control.
If you want to contact us directly for any questions, concerns,
suggestions, help etc. you can mail us directly at wmwm(a)cis-india.org .
Let's join hands to overcome this situation.
Regards,
Bodhisattwa
On behalf of COVID-19 support team