by Father Blany Pinto for BISMumbai

Don Bosco Lonavla has adopted 03 villages for immediate COVID-19 relief outreach and is devising methods to sustain the post-lockdown scenario for the Katkari indigenous peoples in the hilly terrains of Lonavla. Apart from providing food-ration kits to these impoverished marginalised mostly daily-wage earners in the 03 adopted villages, Don Bosco Lonavla is also catering to families in 03 other neighbouring villages.

Over the course of the last week, as done every other week, Don Bosco Lonavla social outreach staff Sonali Shelke and Ravi Shelke visited the 06 villages in which food-ration distribution happens each week. The families were contacted and handed over coupons, since it helps in headcount, preventing last minute gate crashers. After the initial contact and coupon-distribution, Unita Doulton, her team of volunteers, alongwith the Shelkes, disbursed the food-ration kits in the 06 villages on Saturday 02 May. The distribution that happened over the entire morning and afternoon benefitted 186 families in all.

Thanks to generous donors, volunteers, and the social outreach staff, Don Bosco Lonavla COVID-19 relief thus continues relentlessly benefitting 56 families in Karanduli Katkarwadi; 18 families in Vergaon Katkarwadi; 28 families in Mundhavare Katkarwadi; 15 families in Karla Katkarwadi; 14 families in Sadapur Katkarwadi; and 55 families in Vaksai Katkarwadi.