These Lucknow school students are verifying requests from COVID patients across India, helping them with beds, drugs and oxygen

India is gasping for oxygen as the second wave of the Coronavirus has ripped through the country's healthcare system rendering people helpless all over. However, it's the citizens who are standing with each other in this time of dire need. Providing verified leads for oxygen, hospital beds to test centres, plasma donors, medical supplies, social media is abuzz with people — young and old — lending a much-needed helping hand. These young school students from Lucknow too are doing something similar with their platform Mortal's Well Being Trust. Founded by a Class 12 student of La Martiniere College, Lucknow, Kinjalk Sharma (17), the trust was set up last year to help the underprivileged with basic amenities amid the lockdown.

These children set up a COVID resources database a few weeks ago as the second wave of the pandemic began gaining ground. All the information compiled by them is segregated under tabs of States and Union Territories. The team ensures that the information is verified and updated regularly. "Our mission is to help people in these tough times by compiling a list of as many resources available for COVID-19. These include the availability of beds, essential medicines, vaccines, oxygen cylinders and much more," adds Kinjalk.

When you visit the website, you will also get three forms — a donation form, a resource requirement form and a patient's requirements form that can be filled by doctors or even hospitals. "Doctors and hospitals can fill up the patient's requirement form and reach out to us in a situation where they require outside aid/ resources like plasma, oxygen cylinders and cans for the patient. They can also do so if the patient isn’t in a condition to fill it themselves, or if they don’t have an attendant or family member who can help them do the same. Our round the clock volunteers will reach out to the doctor with the available resources within ten minutes of them filling the form. The resource form can be filled by the patients themselves and our team will help them with resources around their area in real-time. This is how we are trying to help people in need across the country," explains Kinjalk.

Currently, the team consists of around 120 student volunteers from all over India and the core team includes 16 students all from Lucknow and within the age group of 13-19 years. "We have also reached out to at least 200 schools in India, who are in the process of making the own delegations and teams, sending us more volunteers. This has been our strategy to combat the second wave," he says.

Speaking about why he started the trust in the first place, Kinjalk shares, "I was in Class 11 when the lockdown began last year, I saw the underprivileged section facing a massive amount of issues with everything being shut and their livelihoods getting lost, especially the migrant workers and labourers near my house seemed helpless. They were also not getting the basic amenities such as food, shelter, clothing, medication. While we were sitting at home attending online classes, children of these labourers and in slum areas were doing menial jobs as they didn't get an opportunity to educate themselves. That's when I decided to set up an organisation run completely by school students to help them with these basic needs."

The team also has plans to open soup kitchens to serve people in need food free of cost at this point, for which they have been collecting funds. Soup kitchens, meal centre, or food kitchen is a place where food is offered to the hungry usually for free or sometimes at a below-market price. "We haven't yet started them as we are in the process of collecting more funds, once we get enough we will start setting them up. We will also seek help from the government to set these up," adds the 17-year-old. They are also working on a mobile app to make it easier for people to access the resources from anywhere in the country.