After setting up a website that covers 446 cities across the country, they are now setting up care centres in rural areas
Rishabh Shah, founder and president of India’s International Movement to Unite Nations (IIMUN)
In April, when the country was reeling under the pressure of the second wave of Covid-19, an army of 194 students decided to step in and help. Seeing thousands of requests for beds, oxygen cylinders, ICU beds and other medical supplies on social media, these students decided to create India’s first national repository of beds and quarantine centers for patients with mild symptoms or those who are asymptomatic.
They worked a straight 72 hours to build a website, findabed.in, where on entering the city and pin code, the website presents a relevant list of centers nearby. Launched on May 1, the platform is currently available in 11 regional languages and has 19,217 centers in 446 cities listed on it. The students collected the database by personally verifying details and listed centers, hospitals and even hotels available as quarantine centers.
These students belong to India’s International Movement to Unite Nations (IIMUN), the world’s largest youth-run organisation. More than 20,000 students from this organisation are volunteering for the #findabed initiative. Among them are also students who lost family members in this wave, and decided to contribute to the initiative so that no one else would have to go through the same. “I’m personally fed up with how the government is dealing with the Covid-19 crisis. The #findabed initiative to me is a way of doing my bit and contributing towards sorting out this national crisis rather than just blaming it on others,” says 15-year-old Samyukt Gopalakrishna, a student volunteer from Chennai.
Student volunteers behind #findabed initiative
It all started on what was a regular day and in a regular IIMUN virtual team meeting. “Everyone was talking about how they’re doing their bit and trying to help people in need by providing leads. That’s when we thought something more needs to be done and the idea of the #findabed initiative struck,” says 29-year-old Rishabh Shah, founder and president of IIMUN.