As the government of India instituted a country-wide complete lockdown for several months in the wake of COVID pandemic, restaurant and caterers were out of businesses. Dairy and poultry farms were forced to throw away huge amounts perishable products like milk and eggs every day. We found an opportunity in adversity and came up with a novel strategy to stop food wastage and do something good. We purchased the excess milk and eggs at low rates and provided those to children of out-of-work daily-wage laborers. The local businesses could recover losses, the malnourished children got some nutrition and we prevented food wastage - a perfect win-win. Over the course of 3 months (April-June 2020), approximately 55000 cups were distributed. Our innovative solution to tackling food wastage attracted a lot of media attention. 

The Sundarbans is the largest contiguous estuarine mangrove forest in the world, located in eastern India in the Ganges Delta at Bay of Bengal. Although protected as UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Indian Sundarbans were considered endangered in a 2020 assessment under the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems framework. Experiencing sea-level rise faster than any other place on Earth, the Sundarbans have already lost more than 28 percent of its land in the past 40 years due to global warming. More recently, in 2020, Super-cyclone Amphan wrecked havoc in Kolkata and Sunderbans. Yet this irreplaceable ecosystem proved once again to be the key saviour for Kolkata, as it absorbed the fury of Amphan much as it has done with similar natural calamities in the past.  Reforestation is of urgent need as only mangroves can protect the inland from disasters.

We have supported embankment work and reforestation efforts in parts of Sunderbans through community engagement. A lot still remains to be done. We seek sponsors and collaboration partners to continue on this very impactful undertaking.