Speak up before its too late...

Being away from home, this was totally difference experience. In 2018, I was at home and saw the news about the floods in Kerala and within hours there was media reports that almost all of Kerala was going to be flooded. I have family and friends in Kerala and I didn't know how I could help.. It didn’t strike me until the news flashed that there is no communication with the people..

I had family and friends in Kerala and all I could do was wish for things to be normal(as i was away). I couldn’t sleep thinking about the people of Kerala.. Even though I grew up in Hyderabad, I couldn’t sleep and couldn’t control my tears.. There wasn’t anything I could do to help the people.. This is when I saw few people share links to few rescue portals. The first one I came across had a form that people had to fill in, the team tried to contact those numbers and marked them on the site. This team also had a Whatsapp group and I was added to this group when I reached out to the admins..

The team took the requests from the WA groups and the website and tried to reach out to people and marked each case as safe/found in the master tracker.. There were several requests that were shared in the group... The admins were in Ernakulam and other regions. The high pri requests were sent to the control room. The coordinates were then passed on to the district administration.

The collectors and few district administration officials were referred to as BRO's

Information/requests were passed on to the control rooms on hourly basis. I don’t want to go into the detail but this gave me an glimpse of how bad the situation on the ground was.. many people were still not traceable.. I was coordinating the efforts with the group and passing on the info, requests or helping mark the ones that were safe. It was definitely a big relief when the folks would come back and reply with contact traced or marked as traced.. I've have personally added 30+ requests to this group. It was great to see the closure on those.. A few years later I came to know that a friends family got the help. Never knew it was one of the request in the same group.. The bro’s had coordinated so well and when they couldn’t find any, they had sent a boat to the house to check on the People. I don’t know who these people are but I want to thank them for what they have done.. They were group of volunteers who coordinated with the control room and also made sure high pri requests were handled with care.. Hats off to this group for the dedication and timely help. More than 1k people were traced or moved to safe places because of this group.

At the same time, I also got in touch with the Kerala rescue portal. The brain child was Arnav. This was one of the best portals out there and coordinated with a lot of people.. The portal was able to take requests from people across the globe and volunteers were reaching out to numbers that had no contact.. The way this worked was simple and anyone from across the world could join and help with the efforts. All that was needed was a phone and internet. The Kerala rescue portal was life changing experience.. Some of the calls made were truly worth it.. I remember a conversation that still is afresh.. I had called to check on the elderly woman. I was able to speak to her after 3-4 days of no contact tracing on the portal.. Got to speak to the ammuma. I can hear her whispering to the family member “ they called to check if she was safe” and that made my day.

There were several calls like this and it marking people safe was the best thing.. There were several calls that were never answered and we don’t know if they were able to move to safer places. This portal was decommissioned after the floods and I felt we should have extended this. There have been several similar incidents and I felt we could have easily extended the Kerala rescue portal for that. The cyclone in Orissa, Bihar, WB and other places have in fact displaced people and there’s a lot of coordination that’s involved.. The Kerala rescue portal had everything that was needed.. The coordination of relief to passing of critical information to authorities was amazing.. All credits to Arnav for his quick thinking and all those volunteers who gave their time.. Appreciate the efforts of these volunteers who managed this brilliantly behind the scenes.

There were efforts by the state government and many people stood up.. The fishermen who brought their boats to the volunteers from all the world who helped by giving their time and money.. The state was able to recover from all this in a year or so.

As it was something very close to our hearts, we started talking about how we can help the people in Kerala. We had looked at different options like a fundraiser, a donation drive. We even thought of shipping the supplies from Seattle to Kerala ;)

It was an experience as we reached out to the airline companies and also reached out to Boeing to see if we could send a shipment from Seattle. As we were running into logistics issues, we decided to stick to a smaller effort and something that we could do away from home.. It was decided that we would donate 500 backpacks to the children in the affected areas. The cost of the backpack was set at $10. However when we started to requested for quotes from suppliers and shopping sites, we realized backpack and supplies would cost more than $10. This was hitting a road block and as they say when one door closes, another opens.. I was talking to a friend(Imran) from school over the phone and I mentioned about this initiative. He has experience in supplies and knew exactly what I was talking about. I don’t know how it happened but it was Gods way of showing us the way :)

The group here in Seattle was excited when we got to know the supplies and bags can be procured within the agreed amount($10). However, there were issues with logistics.. As it was something that I asked for, my friend even traveled to Mumbai as he knew thats the place for bulk orders. He knew exactly where to look for and handpicked the bags.. when he shared the pictures, we looked up the retail prices of these bags and these were 800-1k INR on shopping sites like amazon/flip-kart. He spoke to the supplier and got the bags at a discounted rate. The bags had to be shipped to Kerala.. The supplies had to be shipped from Hyderabad to Kerala.

It was another hurdle and I mentioned this to my dad on the phone. He said he can try to reach out to the courier company. To our surprise, the courier company( The professional couriers) agreed to ship the 500 bags to Kerala. They also initially agreed to ship the supplies from Hyderabad.

My friend(Imran) took this on himself and got the supplies(books, pens, pencils, eraser, umbrella, pouch, geometry box, lunch box, etc) ready. In all this, we missed one crucial cost... It was the GST charges as weren't aware of this when we started the initiative. We could have raised additional funds but then that would have resulted in further delays.. A few individuals reached out and helped us cover the unplanned expenses and we were able to keep the costs at $10 for the bag\supplies(including the shipping and handling).

As there was a logistics issue for the shipment from Hyderabad, we had reached out to another contact who helped ship the supplies to Kerala. It was a nominal charge as they knew it was for the relief work. The supplies to Kerala reached the destination without further delay. The commercial by Shane company would be appropriate. If one listens to audio it goes like this:

The Shane company diamonds are hand picked from Mumbai and tel-aviv

The whole logistics and supplies opened up a whole new world for us. Procurement, shipping & handling were all managed in the background without anyone knowing how it was actually done.

The backpack campaign was a idea that started in Seattle by a small group. There were many people behind the scenes who played a huge role in making this a success. The backpack drive was also picked up by local news agency and we thank them for the love and support: http://nwasianweekly.com/2018/09/three-friends-start-charity-to-help-those-affected-by-kerala-floods-through-crowdfunding/

To our dear friend(Imran), the courier company, the suppliers, the volunteers who transported the backpacks and all the donors.. A big Thank you!!