Our fight against COVID-19.
To protect ourselves, we need to protect others too.
The COVID-19 virus that most of the Indonesian people thought won’t make it here since we have high humidity and heat (along with other debatable reasons), is finally detected here. The Guardian reported COVID-19 was confirmed to have spread to Indonesia on March 2nd, 2020.
As we are facing something we can’t see and never experienced before, we didn’t know what to do. It’s natural to feel fearful when the situations we see in fiction films come to real life. Everyone else is terrified. How can we be unafraid? What should we do? It’s said the wisest thing to do is to stay home. Some joke that you can be a hero for just lying in your bed not doing anything.
We can’t stay home and do nothing.
We do need to isolate ourselves to avoid unknowingly infecting someone as a ‘carrier’ or getting infected by a healthy-looking ‘carrier’. But no matter how hard the effort we put in staying home if the rest of the community are not doing the same, our efforts are, eventually useless.
We can’t get mad at people not putting the same effort as us. Everyone has different situations and not all are privileged with the option of ‘WFH’ (work from home) or Study From Home or just do nothing at home and still able to have a bowl of rice. Most importantly, not all understood completely what ‘Corona’ actually is or how it should not be called as ‘Corona’ anymore but ‘COVID-19’.
To feel fearful or courageous is a matter of choice.
It’s normal to be afraid, but we can also choose to be brave. We have to, we need to, we must be brave. The government, the system, the community, you and I, no one is prepared for this pandemic. That’s why we must help each other in order to break the virus transmission chain. The possibility of infecting each other is utterly high, the only way to fight is to protect each other.
Here in Ranu Welum HQ, we store thousands of masks since we received them through 2019 Kalimantan Relief Effort. We store them because it’s most likely for the forest fire and haze to happen again, bigger, this year. So we need to prepare for that. But unfortunately, as the pandemic hits first, masks are out of stock everywhere. Even hospital doctors ran out of masks and have nowhere to purchase them at a reasonable price. We started to sell our stocks at a normal price to the people in need, including doctors and hospitals in the villages. Since March 14th to March 27th, 8,043 pieces of surgical masks and 413 pieces of N95 masks were distributed, to 10 regencies in Central Kalimantan. Doctors that are assigned for handling COVID-19 patients ask us for masks which is heartbreaking since they are the most vulnerable to getting infected.
We sold our surgical masks at normal price and gave free N95 masks to doctors.
On March 22nd, 6 Indonesian doctors died. This triggered us to fight our fear and decide to take action immediately.
We chose to be brave.
Through Youth Act, 24 youth are committed to tackling this crisis with whatever we have at this moment. and our team is called “Kalimantan Berani” which means Kalimantan is brave. We don’t want to be a victim, but a hero. Not by being at home and not doing anything, but even by being at home, we try to do something.
It’s difficult for shop owners to close their shop, we need to understand that and help them to understand completely about the virus and what can they do to protect themselves as sellers.
We discussed online the main problems we have in our community, which are lack of reliable information and unevenly spread help aids. In Kalimantan Berani, media team creates informative poster and flyers about COVID-19 in the most simple and understandable language and local languages while the field team goes out to put these posters and distribute the flyers to the people. Yes, they are putting themselves at risk by going outside. We try to tackle this by using what we have: firefighter suits, goggles, masks, and extra raincoat for protection. The field team, goes with the name “Katuyung” also provided disinfectant spray and deep cleaning to houses. Other than to help other to prevent COVID-19, it’s also to trigger people that they can also do it too and make a change. We also have our fundraising team to find as many support as we can for us to be able to send help to the villages. We also connect with local tailors to contribute in making fabric masks.
Our volunteer spraying disinfectant at a house at Jl. Murjani, Palangkaraya.
We also have a team in West Kalimantan distributing masks and educating the people about COVID-19. preventions.
You can be brave as well.
Click to view full-size image.
Please follow us on our social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter). We created a directory of informative posters in various languages FREE for you to print and distribute, or maybe just share it online. You can check the posters here.
You have been seeing our relief efforts and our main focus is to provide evenly distributed help aids to villages. Hospitals in the main cities are struggling to with masks, let alone the rural areas with difficult accesses. You can trust us. Donate to us here.
Or send us the needed items if you can. Please confirm to Dita via Whatsapp +62822 5568 4041.
More pictures:
Katuyung team on duty, April 3rd 2020.
Traditional market seller reading our informative flyer.
Hand-washing points made by using water dispensers that our team provided in traditional markets.
#KalimantanBerani is part of Youth Act #Act2Give Campaign.
Be part of the movement! Reach out to us here.