Even before the 2020 lockdown was initiated, Hasiru Dala was preparing awareness materials and speaking to the community about COVID-19, its symptoms and how to prevent the spread of infection. We also worked with citizens and increased citizen engagement to ensure the hygienic disposal of masks.

In 2020, PPE kits were distributed to 200 workers across 33 Dry Waste Collection Centres (decentralised dry waste aggregation centres) in Bengaluru. We also distributed over 3,500 hygiene kits to workers in scrap shops. In 2021, similar PPE kits were distributed to 47 DWCCs, reaching out to 590 workers. The PPE kits included gloves, masks, aprons, sanitisers, soap and soap dispensers. We supported the centres to keep working smoothly with fuel, meals and other necessities.

In 2021, we facilitated direct cash transfer to 2,546 workers through individual and organisational funding.

Hasiru Dala ensured that WPs and their family members who were on prescribed medicines for diabetes, cardiac conditions, mental health conditions and blood pressure are being supported with medicines lasting for about a month.

We then created the Community Health Facilitation Programme in Bengaluru, where we trained youth from wastepickers community (often youth with more digital skills and access) from the slums to act as Community Health Facilitators (CHF) for their own communities. We had 61 CHF’s working in 36 areas in all 8 zones of Bangalore urban and some Bangalore rural areas. 43 of these were young women and the rest were men. Together they covered 13,520 households.

Vaccination drives began before the lockdown in 2021 was imposed, as we worked with PHCs to organise vaccinations for the communities. We reached approximately 14,000 individuals across all cities for their first and second doses and will reach even more as we go.

In 2020, we worked with several NGOs to provide food rations (for a month) and hygiene kits to 49,225 families – these included waste pickers across Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh (and other daily wage/migrant workers in Bengaluru).

In 2021 we worked again to reach 12,863 families in the informal waste working economies.

We identified communities suffering from long-term food insecurity and resulted in malnourished children. In collaboration with the state government Hasiru Dala has a long term strategy to work in this area and still continue to identify malnourished children.

In collaboration with HBS Hospitals, Karnataka Covid: Jeevan Anmol, Mercy Mission, St. Joseph’s College and Titan Company and XLRI Alumni Association organised a Covid Care Centre at St. Joseph’s College where underprivileged people could have a place to isolate themselves with their families and receive necessary medical care. We provided beds to 66 people who needed care over the course of 3 weeks in May and June 2021. The centre is completely equipped can be reopened if there is a need. In addition, support was given to wastepickers family who were in isolation at home