Sanket Shirsat, a 28-year-old student of social work from Nasik, Maharashtra, started a free pan-India counselling service for the youth. Since he did not have monetary resources and thus could not work on ground, Sanket formed a network of doctors who could provide consultation free of cost to people with mild symptoms and therapists who could reach out to young people in need of counselling. While doing his Ph.D. at Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, Sanket has provided counselling services and distributed food packets to those in need as well as given career advice to Class 12 children from rural areas.

Yasir Ansari, a resident of Ranchi, owns an oxygen refilling centre and started offering free oxygen cylinder refilling service to everyone who came knocking on his door. He offered free cylinders for six days when COVID-19 cases were at its peak in the city and ended up refilling almost 60 cylinders everyday. For a month thereafter, he continued to provide free cylinders to people who could not afford to pay for them. He ended up giving out 8-10 cylinders free everyday. At a time when people were charging exorbitant amounts for services, Yasir’s selflessness is an example to us all.

Mumbai-based Ketan Rawal has been selflessly helping our frontline workers. He has provided vanity vans free of charge to essential workers such as police officials working on-ground through the lockdown. Last year, he provided 19 vans to the police officials standing on the roads for hours. During the deadly second wave of the pandemic, he has expanded this for healthcare workers as well. A businessman by profession, Ketan has incurred heavy losses during the lockdown, but that did not deter him from providing the vans for free that otherwise would have cost Rs 1 lakh for rent per day.

Chartered accountants (CA) by profession, Priyank Agarwal and Mayank Goyal, are providing free financial advice to anyone who has lost the primary breadwinner of the family. When members of their immediate family lost a loved one, who was also the breadwinner of the family, Priyank and Mayank decided to sort out the family’s financial investments. They attend to calls from across the country and give out context-specific guidance on investments and insurance policies. Till date, they have helped over 45 families. They connect families to their network of lawyers, in case of no proper documents or will of the deceased.

Kishore and Purni, a couple from Hyderabad, Telangana, cook and deliver nutritional meals to more than 259 families who have tested positive for COVID-19. Despite incurring losses, the couple is using their own savings to bear all the cost and providing food to patients and their attendants at three hospitals. Having provided almost 600 packets of food, Purni and Kishore are also helping critical COVID-19 patients find plasma donors, medicines as well as hospital beds in the city. Moreover, they have also been going out of their way to provide food to stray animals on the streets during the lockdown.

When Ankit Sanghavi, a finance professional, saw the thousands of migrant labourers left stranded on the streets of Mumbai with no home to return to due to the lockdown, he decided to volunteer and help them. The 26-year-old has been arranging food for those travelling on Shramik trains to tracking COVID-19 cases in Dharavi. Since May 2021, he, along with a neighbour, has started making and distributing food to homeless people and migrant labourers in Mumbai. While most people stay at home to protect themselves from the virus, Ankit spends over four hours daily distributing meals to over 40 people.

Riddhi Shah, a resident of Mumbai, has been a pillar of support for many grassroots NGOs. From arranging funds for these NGOs to providing supplies to people, she spent every minute helping NGOs who didn’t have the technological means to draft proposals, design posters, and set up campaigns. Despite helping out in the first wave and going through emotional stress, she stepped up once again to help during the second wave. When COVID patients were gasping for oxygen, Riddhi ensured oxygen concentrators reached beneficiaries. She also tracked the movement of the concentrators to make sure it reached the right person.

Mumbai-based mother and son duo, Heena and Harsh Mandavia, began feeding the homeless and underprivileged for free during the second wave. They began with a one-day donation drive at a local gurudwara on 7 May. Harsh put up a social media appreciation post for someone who had donated the food. Once the post went viral, there were hundreds of people who came forward to support them in their mission to #FeedTheNeedy. The duo have served more than 13,500 meals, which consists of roti, rice, sabzi and dal. The duo is putting in extra hours just to prepare the meals themselves.

Gaurav Rai, a resident of Patna, Bihar, is called the ‘Oxygen Man’. He saved over 1,500 lives across the state by providing oxygen cylinders for free. Gaurav has spent Rs 1.25 lakh from his savings to procure oxygen cylinders for the needy patients. To reach out to as many people as possible, Gaurav has started an oxygen bank at his house. With calls coming in at 5 am, he tries to fulfill oxygen requests till 10 pm in the night. When a patient who had taken oxygen from him recovers, Gaurav takes them a cake to celebrate their new life!

Vijay Iyer from Indore has started free sanitation services. He spent Rs 70,000, which he’d saved to buy a vehicle, to instead buy sanitation equipment. He has sanitised 5,000 houses and 400 places, including temples, mosques, and cremation grounds. Fearing for his and his family’s safety during the second wave, Vijay was in two minds about continuing. However, after he lost his father to COVID, his resolve strengthened. He has systematically divided Indore into seven divisions and visits one division every day of the week, while also attending over 150 calls everyday from those who come to him for help.

Fourth-year engineering student Kaushik Raj attends COVID SOS calls for almost 21 hours a day. So far, the good samaritan has helped more than 3,000 people in need. The inspiring Delhi-based student says that sleeping makes him feel guilty, especially when he thinks about all the SOS calls he might have missed or left unattended. Sleeping only three hours a day, he spends the rest of his time helping strangers procure medical essentials such as oxygen cylinders, ventilators, hospital beds, and more. He and every member of his 60-volunteer team say they receive more than 200 calls a day each.

In May 2021, Rushabh Turakhia started his own initiative for senior street vendors. Rushabh walks the streets of Mumbai for over four hours everyday to meet old vendors who have been abandoned by their families. He educates them about COVID-19 and gives them Rs 7,000 to Rs 15,000 of his own money in order to help them out. He meets at least two vendors a day. With his 16-year-old son, Rusbhab has also started a pan-India ration distribution initiative that reaches remote villages. So far, he has reached out to over 200 families located across Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan.

In the scorching heat in Delhi’s Seema Puri cremation ground, Tridev Kapoor distributes free water bottles to all employees of the cremation centre, including volunteers, ambulance drivers and people conducting ceremonies. Despite the risks of contracting the virus, Tridev, an advertising professional, makes visits to the ground every day and has been distributing 2,000 water bottles daily. He has spent Rs 6 lakh from his savings for this cause. He also distributed five oxygen concentrators and cylinders and installed 10 fans and tents in the cremation ground so people can get respite from the heat while waiting in serpentine queues.

As he encountered several friends and family members who could not find an ambulance or had to wait hours to get one, S Shahjahan decided to start his own ambulance service. The 54-year-old, who runs a travel agency in Balaramapuram on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram, has converted his tourist van into an ambulance. He removed the seats in his van and replaced them with a stretcher. The van is equipped with an oxygen cylinder. He also hired drivers so the ambulance is available round the clock. Shahjahan is offering his services free of cost to COVID-19 patients across the city.

In March 2020, Azeemudin quit his job and help people amid the pandemic. He realised that having a full-time job might become a hurdle in his mission to create impact. The former project coordinator distributed ration kits to more than 15,000 families, as well as meals to over 1 lakh people. With the help of 25 volunteers, he feeds over 1,500 people daily. As many have lost their main source of income due to the lockdown, providing essentials was not enough to help. So he set up a livelihood center where he facilitates training in tailoring for 40 women.

Lalit Meena (25) in Delhi is arranging hospital beds for COVID-19 patients who have no access to social media or no one to run around in search of beds. Lalit has also helped people procure oxygen or essential medicines. He has arranged help for 600 such patients. Lalit moved to Delhi to prepare for UPSC exams, but put his service to humanity at the forefront. With his own funds and with help from his friends, he has distributed food to over 10,000 daily wagers and their families. He’s also distributed ration to anyone who comes to him for help.

In April 2021, amid the second wave of COVID-19, Mohan began to see how so many in his hometown, Ambernath, were feeling a sense of helplessness at losing a loved one – the kind he felt when he lost his wife few years back. Wanting to help, the 65-year-old retired private company employee used all his pension savings, worth almost Rs 4 lakh, in addition to a loan of Rs 2.5 lakh, to buy and donate a ventilator to the municipal corporation. His donation of a ventilator worth Rs 6.5 lakh has helped the hospital in Ambernath save countless lives. 

Gopal Singh from Bikaner in Rajasthan has been reaching out to folk artists who lost their livelihood due to the restrictions imposed to curtail the virus. He supported their families across Jaisalmer, Barmer and Bikaner. The scorching heat and risk of contracting COVID at any point did not stop him from travelling miles to deliver packets of ration to over 150 families. He also procured oxygen concentrators for a Community Health Centre where these folk artists reside. Gopal also helped those in dire need of monetary assistance to pay their hospital bills or organise the last rites for a relative.