#humsafarfightscovid19- Emergency Fund to fight Against Covid-19

On 11 March 2020, WHO declared Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) outbreak as a pandemic and reiterated the call for countries to take immediate actions and scale up response to treat, detect and reduce transmission to save people’s lives. Covid-19 continues to spread at a very fast pace and is impacting thousands of individuals across the world. Nationwide lockdown as a response to COVID-19 has impacted livelihoods of several marginalized communities whom the Indian government has pledged to support by announcing different financial schemes. However, limited efforts have been made to reach out the transgender community who are in acute need of financial and social support. Transgender/Hijra communities are the most affected by social distancing measures as they don’t have any source of income or financial support since they mostly depend on begging and sex work. Most of the schemes announced to access food through public distribution system need a ration card which may not be available with transgender community.  Communities in certain districts are more affected than others due to fewer relief activities being undertaken.

The Humsafar Trust (HST) initiated a COVID-19 emergency fund and relief initiative on 29th March 2020 with an aim to reach out and provide ration, medical and financial (in emergency situations) support to the most impacted community persons across India. In the light of the above, the following are immediate demands by various community members across India to support the communities with basic necessities in view of multiple lockdown situation and limited access to public spaces as per the Coronavirus advisory.

1. Community Kitchen: Covid-19 lockdown leaves transgender people at heightened risk of poverty and hunger. In this pandemic and Covid19 lockdown situation, communities are implementing different innovative approaches to establish a community based kitchen. There are few Transgender community members from Dinajpur (West Bengal) who intend to provide two times meal to Transgender community in the respective area for those who do not have earning sources. This innovative approach can be replicated to different districts within the state, ensuring hygiene, safety norms and social distancing in these community kitchens.
2. Ration Support: To provide monthly Rations kits (with 5 Kgs Rice, 5 Kgs Wheat flour, 3 Kgs dal, 1 litre cooking oil, Salt, 1 kg sugar, masala powder, 1 kg tea leaves and immunity building foods, etc.) through our chain of community based organizations in over 20 states of India who ensure that supplies reach the impacted communities.  
3. Medicines Support: To support the communities with immediate medical health care interventions in the context of Covid-19 as well as providing support for other ailments through their local health care systems. We initiated support to the people living with HIV (PLHIV) with ART medicines (in case they are not able to procure it through govt. centre) and other multivitamins tablets. 
4. Rental Support: The pandemic has really impacted the unorganised sectors the most which resulted in loss of job opportunity. Many of the Trans persons involved in sex work and other informal sectors have lost their livelihood. They are facing eviction from their place of stay due to non-payment of timely rent. Some of them are facing violence and have been ask to leave their houses and do not have any place to stay in crisis. The Humsafar Trust intends to add support to community members to make the partial payment or pay for the rented place. We will allocate fix amount of Rs. 5000/- per month to each beneficiary. We will do a direct transfer to the house owner/hostel bank account. We are also negotiating with various shelter homes so that we can shift them to a safe place and take care of their expenses for a period of three months to provide them with basic assistance. 

By ensuring the inclusion of marginalised group such as Transgender/Hijra community and subsequently the larger LGBTQ community we can collectively fight the pandemic crisis. This will allow communities to have access to basic daily needs such as ration, monetary support and health services. In this context, HST intends to help the underprivileged LGBTQ+ community members to support the urgent needs of the communities.