Thursday 16 April 2020

Battling tough times during COVID-19

Since few years, Action for Pune Development (APD) has been working on  various issues such as environmental conservation, education for underprivileged , youth and women empowerment , road safety, etc. The young members of APD have aspirations to make a worthwhile contribution towards social development and are willing to make use of innovative methods for the same.

In times of this global crisis of COVID-19, the members of APD chose to play a role to join the fight against coronavirus. There are various concerns which arose during this situation. Due to the lockdown, business got disrupted, daily wage workers faced a dire situation and daily life came to a standstill.

In this situation, APD decided to focus one  issue which needed immediate action. Pune city has a large elderly population. Many people settle in Pune after retirement it offers a peaceful lifestyle. But now they face an unavoidable issue. While the lockdown is necessary to control the spread of the disease, getting essentials like groceries and medicines has become difficult.



About 30% of the people above age 65 have poor health and insufficient medical care as their primary issue. Thus, making medicines and every-day essentials reach them in the earliest possible time is what APD aimed for. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the youth to take care of the elderly population.


The method adopted is as follows -
  • APD has a team of 80+ volunteers based in various parts throughout the city. 
  • Whenever someone needs assistance, they contact the organisation and provide necessary information like name, address and the list of essentials. 
  • This information is then shared with the volunteer who resides in the vicinity of the person who has made a request. 
  • Every volunteer follows a strict protocol and makes use of personal protection equipment like a mask, sanitizer, and gloves. 
  • The volunteer then picks up the required goods from the nearby stores and delivers them to the destination while making  minimum or zero direct contact. 
APD is fortunate to have received an overwhelming support from the Pune Police. This makes sure we can conduct this work without any hurdles. People can volunteer for this task by simply contacting APD through social media, emails, calls etc. and requests for assistance can be made in the same way.

Owing to social media, there has been a wide outreach of this campaign and we are happy to announce that we have been able to help 400+ elderly couples and will continue to do so in the coming days. We would also like to extend gratitude to the frontline covid warriors like doctors, nurses, police, cleaners, government workers, shop owners for working diligently in these trying times and making life safer for the common people.

A humble request to everyone to stay home and stay safe as well as make it safer for the people fighting out there!

Our Corona Warriors:












Reported by
Apurv Deshpande