Twenty-three-year-old Aviva Damania teamed with Dharavi’s Banyan Tree English School to donate one month’s ration and sanitation kits to 100 identified families in what is believed to be Asia’s largest slum. "The package each family (received) on July 13, 2020 contained rice, wheat flour, two kinds of pulses, sugar, tea, salt and cooking oil, enough to sustain a family of four for a month,” she told Parsiana on July 16. The sanitation kit contained a medical grade face shield, sanitizer and hand cleaning wipes.
Aviva Damania, above and top 2nd from r: caring for those affected by coronavirus
Dharavi was one of the worst affected areas in Bombay in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic and was declared a containment zone in its entirety. "Most of the families whose children studied in the School were greatly affected not only because of the medical crisis but also the financial fallout. As a lot of them were day workers, they have completely lost their source of income,” Damania told us, acknowledging the assistance of the School management in identifying the recipients of the assistance.
A mental health specialist trained at City University of London, Bombay based Damania is the founder of The Mind Essentials, a platform for online counselling via video calls, phone calls and online chat.