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 as early as April 30, 2021. 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 support - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScYcjEeuT7vUxP3NJg7KfIiZaude9IXLyCagsDarTx11J4ymA/viewform

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

Please read the FAQ subpage too - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_support_for_Wikimedians/India/FAQ

The support team would also like to emphasise that,

a)  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,
b) 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.
c) 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@cis-india.org .

Let's join hands to overcome this situation.

Regards,
Jayanta
On behalf of the COVID-19 support team