“Oikkoi Shokti Foundation” started journey to help people under lockdown in Mymensingh

Lockdown due to COVID-19 has left tremendous boredom for young people. To keep in touch with friends, young people often make frequent video calls over social media. 11 friends of Mymensingh turned a simple video call into a special one. They thought of helping people in this locked down period and gradually that informal charity work has turned into a foundation. Now it’s known as “Oikkoi Shokti Foundation”

In terms of experience, it’s not more than a newborn baby, but as the time it’s started working in Mymensingh, no other individual organizations started helping people officially, That’s why this foundation reached popularity overnight in this divisional city.

Through social media, they asked for donations from people and in the first slot, they gave a package of dry food supply to 50 families who did not get any kind of government relief earlier. A restaurant of Mymensingh city named Presidency Kitchen provided their place for relief packaging and storage.

These people are from different backgrounds, all of them are nearly in their early twenties. Lack of manpower was the biggest challenge for them to pack all these bags, especially measuring the perfect amount of rice, lentils, onions, and potatoes were hard enough.

But they didn’t stop because of the hard situation. Rather in the second slot, they dared to manage 100 bags of emergency food supply and among 100 bags they provided 70 bags to the sex workers of a brothel, who generally always get negligence from others. A representative from the local brothel asked for help through the medium of a local NGO. Providing food to the sex workers was a turning point for these young stars and it’s encouraged peoples to donate more to help communities like them.

Throughout this very short span of the journey, time was not favorable always, as the Corona Infection rate goes tremendously high in the city, these people decided to provide money instead of packaged food for ensuring safety. They have provided 50 families “Anondo Kham”(an envelope of happiness) for their purchase cost purpose in Holy Ramadan.

This foundation is planning to provide their next slot of help before Eid-ul-Fitr to around 100 families.

When one of the members was asked about the future plan of this foundation, he replied, “we didn’t even think to form a foundation, but we could not resist ourselves to do something for the people surrounding us. As we are of different professions, we are thinking to continue our activities in emergency situations like this, or on occasions like eid. Everything depends on the response of the people.”

These people believe that unity can do anything, they have taken the name of the foundation as the spirit, which is unity is strength.

You can also be part of their journey, To support “Okkoi Shakti Foundation, please visit their Facebook page.

Zeba Fariha is a graduate of Law. She is enthusiastic about working for environmental law and to build a career in the development sector of Bangladesh. She loves traveling, sketch and logo designing.
2
  • Mridha
    29 April 2020 at 7:37 pm -

    Really a very good initiative keep going on guys.

  • Tareq Salahuddin
    30 April 2020 at 6:47 am -

    Thanks for the great article.