During the COVID-19 lockdown, Hamro Chhahari volunteers distributed rice, dal, oil and essential supplies to stranded patients, attendants and migrant families in Mumbai and surrounding areas.
When the COVID-19 lockdown was announced in March 2020, hundreds of cancer patients and their attendants found themselves stranded across Mumbai — far from home, with treatment paused and savings exhausted. Hamro Chhahari pivoted overnight from a residential shelter into a relief operation.
Volunteers, working under strict safety protocols, mapped out stranded families ward by ward. Ration kits — rice, dal, cooking oil, salt, sugar, tea and basic spices — were assembled at the Chembur ashram and delivered door-to-door across Mumbai and the surrounding suburbs.
Through 2020 and 2021, the drive expanded to include masks, sanitiser and, in the second wave, oxygen-concentrator referrals for patients in critical need. Local donors, partner organisations and individual contributors stepped up — every rupee was logged and every kit accounted for.
The pandemic years were the hardest in the organisation's short history. They were also a reminder that the network we had built for cancer patients could, in a crisis, hold up an entire community.
