Need

Studies have shown that maternal and infant deaths can be attributed to many factors including extreme poverty. The costs associated with getting tests required for diagnosis of illness and for treatments, force such low-income families to make tough choices and decisions. Frequently, these sick patients skip treatments altogether, resulting in their illness getting worse and can lead to death.

Approach

Ekam subsidizes the cost of treatment and lab tests for patients who cannot afford it.

Ekam’s staff and network first helps identify patients in need who are unable to pay for these medical services. The organization then helps subsidize the costs of the services which are completely free to the patient. This is especially important during the COVID pandemic, to identify children requiring advanced care early enough to prevent serious disease, disability and death.

Ekam also organizes free health camp services. The health camps provide free medical consultations and treatment. These services help make a difference by enabling access to health care services for the poor and needy. Ekam works at the ground level, with local volunteers who can connect with the villagers, to dispel myths about health and nutrition, thus strengthening mothers and resulting in healthy babies being born. This will save funds for better use than trying to save one child at a time.

Ekam surveys hospitals all across the state of Tamil Nadu for immediate needs and supports them by providing the necessary life-saving equipment and daily needs like gloves, PPE, IV stands, pulse oximeters, etc.

Outcome

Ekam also organizes free health camp services. The health camps provide free medical consultations and treatment. These services help make a difference by enabling access to health care services for the poor and needy. Ekam works at the ground level, with local volunteers who can connect with the villagers, to dispel myths about health and nutrition, thus strengthening mothers and resulting in healthy babies being born. This will save funds for better use than trying to save one child at a time.

Ekam surveys hospitals all across the state of Tamil Nadu for immediate needs and supports them by providing the necessary life-saving equipment and daily needs like gloves, PPE, IV stands, pulse oximeters, etc.

Winter is the time of the year where snow falls and chills grow. While we are enjoying a snow day, many people are exposed to this cold without any protective material to shield them from the cold. Many of us have coats we have lightly used. We can make a difference just by donating them and of course new ones if you’d like to. Anything related to what I mention will help: coats, gloves, hats, etc. Cooling of body parts may result in various cold injuries, with hypothermia being the most serious. Nonfreezing cold injuries include chilblain, immersion foot and trench foot. Freezing injuries include frost-nip and frostbite. If you can donate, you are impacting many people’s lives. We here in South Jersey are organizing a Winter Drive to donate Winter wear to Homeless and Covenant house in Atlantic City

Covid-19 hit America like a wrecking ball, devastating the economy and causing many people to suffer. We were seeing many people needing food from the food bank: cars stretching for miles, people struggling to get the food. We here at the South Jersey Ekam Chapter started to think about how we could make a difference. We submitted a project called “Fighting Hunger in South New Jersey During Covid-19” to Caringcrowds.org which was approved by Johnson and Johnson. We raised $2000 dollars and were able to contribute 3,000 meals for the local food bank. It was a humbling experience knowing that a little thing that we did, could go a long way and help many families.

Most of us kids here in the USA are privileged to have various kinds of footwear. Few for school, few for sports, and few just for fun. Nearly 1 billion of the more than 7 billion inhabitants of Earth lack shoes or have inadequate footwear. Just imagine us without shoes. Walking on dirty sidewalks, on wet grass, on very hot concrete. Well that’s how life is for some kids.

We started a shoe drive to collect and donate footwear to help at least a few children. A few of our friends in the community donated shoes. We were able to collect about 40 pairs of shoes which we packed and took to India. Once we reached India we donated the shoes through the EKAM foundation to a school in Salavakkam. Salavakkam is a village panchayat located in Kanchipuram district of Tamil-Nadu state, India. Government Panchayat Union Primary School of Salavakkam Village has a strength of around 200 students pursuing their education from I to V Grade. We were able to donate these shoes along with some school supplies to the students.