IAN during Covid 19 Pandemic – Support to the most vulnerable beneficiaries

Covid 19 Pandemic and the introduction of the state of emergency in Serbia, forced IAN to adjust its operation to the new circumstances. Taking care of safety and health of Serbian citizens, health of its beneficiaries, volunteers, staff and consultants, IAN continued to provide its services utilizing different online opportunities (e-mail, Skype, Zoom, Viber, WhatsApp) and telephone communication. By all means we are reinforcing the importance of providing necessary mental health and psychosocial services.

We maintained in close contacts with our beneficiaries and provision of psychological and psychiatric intervention and psycho-social support to beneficiaries, as well as communication with relevant institutions and partners continued without interruption. 

What are we encountering these days in the field?

The state of emergency and curfew directly led to the increased need for basic necessities such as food, hygiene and medicines among our beneficiaries. Majority of our beneficiaries are living on the edges of poverty, surviving with occasional jobs, collection of secondary materials, and financial help from social welfare centers. As expected, many people lost their jobs, in the first place those who had temporary jobs. Because of curfew, collection of secondary materials is not possible. Social welfare centers, Red Cross, public kitchens also had to adjust its operations to this situation. They are facing tremendously increased number of people who desperately need their services, especially in big cities. They are forced to make waiting lists, thus leaving a number of people helpless in this already difficult situation.

What is IAN doing?

As soon as we realized the difficulties encountered by our beneficiaries, IAN has decided on the reallocation of certain resources, thus enabling the purchase of essential food packages and hygiene for its most vulnerable beneficiaries, especially families with many members. Packages are already delivered to one family of returnees through the Readmission agreement, with no income or social welfare support. This family has nineteen members, just five of them adults including 18 years old young man. The remaining 15 family members are underage children mainly between 2 and 10 years, and among them are also three babies – a new-born, two and four months old babies.

IAN provided help packages with food and hygiene items that will be delivered to another seven families in coming days. All of them have many members and many underage children, including several single mothers, with no income.

We thank to our donors who always have an understanding for such actions and we are hoping that the others will also recognize this initiative as an urgent and necessary action during the Covid 19 pandemic and will enable IAN to continue with this support until the end of the state of emergency in Serbia.