Inspirational children in Patna show incredible resilience as they support their communities through the pandemic.

23/2/2021

Meet some of the children, who have shown incredible resilience and helped to support their communities through the COVID-19 crisis. Setting up small businesses to help support their families, ensuring children don't miss out on their education, making face masks for people in their villages and holding campaigns to spread awareness of the virus.

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The communities that we work with in Patna, India continue to face many challenges due to COVID-19. Feelings of uncertainty, fear and anxiety from increased vulnerabilities and acute economic crisis are still very strong in and around the city. Although the Indian drugs regulator has given the green light to two vaccinations, with 1.3 billion people in India and the huge disparity between those who have access to privileges an those who don’t, there is little chance the Dalit communities in Bihar State will be high up in the queue for the vaccination.

Despite the pressures of the pandemic, many of the children we work with have shown incredible spirit and become models of resilience, helping to support their families, ensuring other children don’t miss out on their education and holding community awareness campaigns.

Anjali and Ansu

To generate additional income and help support their families with day-to-day necessities, Anjali and Ansu both started small shops in their local areas, with very little investment to help tide their households through these difficult times.

Soni

12 year old Soni was inspired by the team in India after seeing all the social action during lockdown.

She began to join in herself, helping to connect those in need with government programmes and conducting her own COVID-19 awareness campaign, making masks for many people in her village.

Anchal

Soni’s friend Anchal (also 12 years old) was disappointed that she couldn’t attend lessons at the Learning Centres and was having to learn in small batch classes, she was also worried that some children in her local area were missing out.

So after she finished her own small group lessons, she started to gather extra groups of 5 children at a time outside her house to pass on everything she had learned. Because of Anchal’s classes, other children were inspired to do the same, so there are now many child run small classes that take place outside homes.

Soni and Anchal were both identified by a local mentorship programme and awarded with scholarships in recognition of their outstanding contributions.

Anjali, Ansu, Soni and Anchal have all shown incredible resourcefulness and resilience, helping to support their families and wider communities and inspiring other children to follow their lead and become agents of change themselves.

Click below to read about some of the other ways the children we work with in India, Bangladesh and Uganda have been instrumental in helping support their communities throughout lockdown.

Children are supporting their communities through the pandemic