COVID - 19 RESPONSE

Education around cotton masks

Although initially there had been doubt about the effectiveness of a home made cotton face cover, reports from the Czech Republic proved that their country had found these very effective in containing the spread of the virus. The eCoexist team, along with help of several volunteers translated the video form the Czech organisations masks4all.org into four Indian languages to relay to the Indian public.

You can watch the videos here...

Original English Video from Czech Republic

Hindi video

Marathi video

Gujarati video

Bengali video

Reusable cotton face covers : DIY

eCoexist created a simple DIY poster to help people to start making cotton face masks at home. This poster was designed by Marie Gon, a Dutch designer and then translated into nine Indian languages, and then sent out via social media to several networks around the country. The simple step by step instructions, allowed self help groups to start their own production for local supply chains.

CLICK HERE for a detailed explanation of the process.

Production and Supply of Face covers

The womens groups in the village of Ahwalwadi stepped forward to make reusable cotton face covers to supply to hospitals, industries and residential neighbourhoods early during the Covid crisis in Pune. With a start from the KEM hospital the women, went on to make several thousand face covers using a double layer medium thick cotton fabric, or a three layer soft cotton fabric. Orders were collected by means of social media from various neighbourhoods and relayed to the women who continued to produce from their homes in the village.

This project provided a source of income to the women, during these uncertain times and also used their sewing skills perfectly. The network of production that had already been established for cloth bag production, worked very well to supply reusable cotton face covers.

NGO collective

As the demand for the reusable cotton face masks increased, after the government of India endorsed the idea, we found that we were getting many many requests for the masks, we invited several other NGOs in Pune city who had also begun production to come together in a collective, so that we could balance supply and demand, and we started forwarding orders to each of these NGOs. Among the organisations who worked with us were:

  1. Poornam Eco vision
  2. Anubhuti Foundation
  3. Manndeshi Foundation
  4. Udyogita Mahila Sanstha

The eCoexist team coordinated the marketing of the masks to ensure that each of these NGOs recieved enough orders for their women.

Read more about each of these NGOs here...

REUSABLE COTTON MASKS