New Delhi: A Facebook post offering assistance to those affected by the pandemic has inspired many, from Guwahati in Assam to Dimapur in Nagaland, to extend help to those in need.
Lenti Aier, founder and president of an NGO called Act of Kindness Society in Dimapur, said she has been reaching out to families in need during the Covid-19 crisis as part of a “movement” she came across on Facebook.
Aier told The Morung Express that the thought of helping people, first came to her when she came across a Facebook post by one of her friends in Guwahati.
It read: “If anyone is not working/not getting an income and runs out of food, or even struggling for some basic medicines. Please don’t go to sleep with an empty Stomach. Don’t be afraid to send us a private message. We will be more than happy to share whatever we have. We will arrange whatever we can in our capacity. We will find a way to arrange it for you, no questions asked! #CopyAndPasteIfUCanAndYouAreWillingToHelp.”
“Since it is a post allowing anybody to participate in their own capacity, I have come across my friends sharing the same too…They just copy and paste it on their Facebook wall, and then the post goes around. In no time, the entire community is helping one another,” Aier added.
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9-year-old Manipur climate activist raises Rs 45 lakh to fight Covid-19
Licypriya Kangujam, a nine-year-old climate activist from Manipur, has raised Rs 45 lakh to battle the Covid-19 pandemic. The girl recently started a fundraiser called ‘India Needs Oxygen Mission’ to buy oxygen concentrators for poor Covid-19 patients.
“This campaign started as a self-funded mission to help people across the country get immediate access to oxygen concentrators. I assumed a requirement of 100 pieces that I could manage,” she has been quoted as saying.
The oxygen concentrators will not be associated with any government or private hospitals but handed over to poor patients directly.
In a tweet earlier, she wrote, “10 pieces of 5L Oxygen Concentrator will reach India in the next few days which costs around 50,000₹ per piece including shipping. Total 100 pieces ordered. I’m trying my best by spending my own savings and some from my awards received last year. Let’s hope for the best!”
Meet Ajanta Neog, Assam’s first-ever woman finance minister
Ajanta Neog, BJP MLA from Assam’s Golaghat constituency, has become the first-ever woman finance minister of the state. Neog has been allotted the portfolios of finance and social welfare departments in Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s newly-formed cabinet.
Neog entered the assembly in 2001 with the Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government in the state. She has since won five consecutive terms, making her the second-longest serving woman legislator of Assam.
She had earlier held portfolios like Public Works Department (PWD) (Roads & Building, NH) and Urban Development & Housing Department. During her tenure as the PWD minister in 2015, Assam had registered a 17 per cent increase in the length of pucca roads against a national average of four per cent.
Neog had joined the BJP in December 2020.
Naga village transforms house, artefacts of its ‘first settler’ into a museum
More than one and a half centuries after a man named Pucho Hibo first settled into the village of Khuzama in Nagaland, the residents have now turned his house into a museum.
Called the Pucho-Hibo museum, it also houses the traditional ritual stones used by Hibo when he first settled in the village in 1861.
“Right from inception, we decided to preserve the structure of the old Kemevo’s house by protecting it with a bigger house. We wanted to reclaim the original structure as much as we could along with his household articles,” Visakhono Hibo, convenor of the museum building committee, has been quoted as saying.
Some of the items that have been kept at the museum are a wooden bed and pillow, kitchen utensils, pots, baskets, etc made of wood, stone, clay, bamboo and crude iron, as well as animal skin and bones.
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