What started as an offer to just help friends on a messaging group has grown to become a 46,000 member Facebook group touching 14 countries. Here's how Nagaraj, the founder of Caremongers India, juggled work, the initiative and being part of a Covid-19 government task force all at once
Image: Renjen Pavithran
The first 20-30 minutes—typically at 5:30 am—with the day’s first coffee is a ritual that’s sacrosanct for Mahita Nagaraj, founder of Caremongers India. This survived through three phases of recent circumstances as the Covid-19 pandemic spread, with lockdowns in countries around the world, including India. The phases were before, during and after the lockdown.
Caremongers India started with an innocuous WhatsApp message on Nagaraj’s school group, in which she offered to check on the parents of friends living overseas, if they needed help. One thing led to another and Nagaraj found herself with an initiative that she named Caremongers India—inspired by something she had read about an initiative in Canada about ‘care-mongering’.
What began as a Facebook group for the effort now has some 46,000 members—both looking for help and offering to volunteer—across 14 countries. Requests for help range from just asking for someone to run a quick errand to seeking recommendations on treatment for cancer, and how one might achieve that during these times.
“During the lockdown, including being part of a government task force for getting essentials out to people and handling calls from the Caremongers initiative, I was pulling 20-hour days,” Nagaraj said in a phone interview. “There was no routine.”
Now, life is getting back to routine dictated by the new normal of having to live with the virus. In the pre-Covid days, 38-year-old Nagaraj’s day worked around the needs of her 12-year-old son, who is a keen athlete at a reputable school in Bengaluru, and passionate about swimming.