Asha Community Relief
Update on COVID in India
After a time of very little infection and activity, around April COVID began to spread in India again, and this time it spread much more rapidly and with much bigger impact.
In the span of just a few weeks, the country went from normal daily life to widespread infection, deaths and lack of basic medical necessities like space in hospitals, access to oxygen, and basic medications.
For the safety of our women and their families and communities, we closed regular Asha Project work on May 1st, and two weeks later West Bengal is on full lockdown.
Around October 2020, West Bengal hit its highest daily COVID infection rate at about 4,000 new infections in a day. As of May 20th, West Bengal had 20,000 new COVID infections recorded per day, and raising. From March 15th to May 15th 2021, just two short months, the number of positive covid cases outnumbered the total number of cases from March 2020-March 2021.
Hope Is Not Canceled
As always, we are committed to empowering and providing for our women and their families and communities. While we can not meet in person and all handicraft work has stopped, our commitment to our women and our Asha Project community has not! Our leaders are in constant contact with all of our women making sure they have what they need to provide for their families, checking in on their families health and any medical needs, and continuing to pour love and encouragement into their lives during this difficult time. COVID has changed a lot, but HOPE IS NOT CANCELED!
Asha Community Relief
We are ALWAYS ready to step in and help our women and their families, not only by empowering them to make beautiful products to help support their families, but to step in with financial and any other needed help when serious or emergency needs arise. Now, in the midst of the second wave of COVID in India, the immediate need for essentials like food and emergency medical needs not only for our women and their families but their communities as well is unreal.
Every family has been effected by COVID and as daily infection rate continues to rise, the impact and need is multiplying. And as we are getting farther into a full lockdown, more and more families will be in need of daily essentials like food and toiletries. We are committed to meeting as many of those needs as we can, and we need your help!
Three ways to help us make sure ALL of our women and ALL of their communities are taken care of:
- Shop, Shop, Shop! A super important way you can support our women is to make sure they have plenty of work waiting for them when we can open our doors again. Wouldn't it be amazing if day 1 back to work we could tell them that we are COMPLETELY sold out of EVERYTHING and we have twice as much work for them as when we had to close our doors. So shop for yourself, buy gifts for friends, and help us sell out! Shop Now!
- Donate to our COVID Community Relief Fund! The need is huge and it is our faithful shoppers and supporters that show up and give that allows us to make sure all of our women, their families and their communities are taken care of. Donate Now!
- Share! Don't keep your love for Asha Project and your beautiful fair trade, handmade products a secret! Share about Asha Project in your communities, share our page on social media, share pictures of your favorite products, share how you are helping with our Asha Community Relief efforts and help us sell out so that our women will have lots of work waiting when we can reopen!