Four college girls create website for Covid assistance

Bengaluru: Four II-year BA students of Christ (deemed-to-be university) have created a website of accumulated Covid-19 resources for different cities in the country, including Bengaluru, Pune, Delhi, Ahmedabad and Mumbai.
The four girls aged around 20 — Ashwini Katte Raghavendra, N Sindhu, Renibi Mukhia and Geethika Nair — regularly update the information on their website and verify the sources mentioned.




The website primarily includes a list of verified contacts, sites and organisations to access hospital beds, Covid medication, plasma donors, oxygen cylinders and meal delivery systems across various states in India.
Ashwini told TOI that the idea took off when she and Sindhu saw a spike in requests for plasma and other essentials, while working as part of Christ’s Centre for Social Action (CSA). As members of the committee, they saw the situation first-hand. “We also witnessed some cases in and around our extended families and initially planned to create a Google document with all the information,” she said.
But on realising that Google docs are prone to crashes, Sindhu found a platform to create websites free of cost and that finally led to https://sindhu200121.wixsite.com/website-1
Soon, Renibi and Geethika joined their initiative and their website was approved by the university a week ago. Since then, the students have been receiving more than five to six calls a day. They have even made some contacts with BBMP officials after connecting with them regularly. “We ask for details of patients and the requirement and help them accordingly,” said Ashwini.
In between studies
But how do they manage this initiative alongside studies? “We try to have a schedule around it. We are asked if our phone numbers serve as helplines, but we say we are not a 24/7 facility, just some students trying to do our bit,” said Ashwini, adding that sometime in the afternoon or evening, the four take up website updating and verification work as per each member’s schedule.