India is going through multiple major challenges triggered by the Covid 19 pandemic. It is visible that the people are facing many problems including shortages of vaccines, hospital beds, oxygen cylinders and other vital medicines in different parts of the country.

The killer virus has made people scared of each other. Instead of coming together for helping out the patients, people are compelled to maintain social distancing and self-isolation to protect themselves and are unable to help each other. On the contrary, in these extraordinary times, the Covid victims’ families are desperately looking for a helping hand, no matter big or small. The only thought in their mind is to get any support that will save the life of a near one. Even a small help can do wonders.

In this grim scenario, when people are gasping for oxygen and using all their resources to get a hospital bed, countless Indian volunteers in and out of the country are toiling 24x7 to provide some succor.

A bridge

Indo-Arab Helping Hands (IAHH) is one such platform. Founded by Asif Rameez Daudi - a faculty member of King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah - along with some like-minded Indians in Saudi Arabia, the forum was created to establish a bridge between the huge Indian diaspora in the Gulf region and the fellow countrymen back home by following all rules. The forum’s main focus is to serve the Indo-Arab communities at large during these critical times. It collects requests for help and widely shares them with the teams active in India to connect the donors or helping hands with the recipients.

Team Indo Arab Helping hands is working voluntarily and tirelessly on social media to make available plasma, blood, hospital beds, oxygen cylinders, ambulance and other necessary medicines needed by their countrymen back home and in the Gulf region who have been hit by a massive Covid 19 wave.

The efforts of this team have been noticed by the mainstream media in India and IAHH has quickly succeeded in reaching out to the Covid 19-affected patients and their families across the country. The team’s modus operandi is to mainly coordinate and collaborate with all those who are voluntarily and passionately devoted to helping the people. The noble work is supported among others by the renowned Indian media houses, journalists and social activists, who have welcomed the bid to extend timely medical help to the ailing.

Use of social media

The forum utilizes social media to reach out to people, no matter where they are. The group is open to every Indian across the globe who intends to serve the nation and humanity. Indo-Arab Helping Hands team has provided a platform to the Indians in the Gulf region and in India to forward their requests for help which are immediately verified by the team before being posted on social media. The target is to save the life of everyone seeking help.

Though it is a great sigh of relief that the team has helped over 70 percent of those who appealed, that is not enough. IAHH is constantly striving to extend more assistance. They receive many requests daily from different locations of India and mostly these are solved on the same day. The main motto of this team is “Every life and every tiny help matters” & “Together we can and we will overcome this.”

The founder and the core committee members live thousands of miles away from their motherland, yet their cravings and profound love for the country and countrymen propelled them to build the platform.  The sincerity of the combined endeavors of this team, notwithstanding the limited resources, has brought smiles to many faces in India and abroad, irrespective of their region, religion, gender, caste or creed.

Everyone must have sympathy for the Covid-19 affected persons but some courageous people feel empathy which makes them reach out with help. The IAHH pursues the philosophy of fraternity and patriotism and love for humanity that enshrines the idea of India. This team reflects the ethos of the cultural diversity of India, Indians in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world which could be a fiber of the thread of strong bilateral relations between India and the Gulf countries.

(The writer is a core team member of Indo-Arab Helping Hands and social studies teacher at an international school in Saudi Arabia.)