Two Indian students from the Telugu states, staying thousands of miles away, have come together to help out several Indian students stuck in the United Kingdom amid the COVID-19 pandemic across the world.
Meet Stephen Anurag Prathipati, an MSc Public Policy and Management student at King’s College, London and Ennamshetty Akhil, a lawyer who is pursuing his further studies at the University of Edinburgh. The duo have co-founded an online forum to support the mental health and well-being of Indian students presently in the UK.
They began the initiative after Akhil contracted and recovered from COVID-19 in Hyderabad. Once Akhil recovered, the pair decided to set up an online forum for students to find answers to their queries, discuss their concerns and connect with others in a similar situation.
In fact, Akhil was Patient Number 16 in Gandhi Hospital, Hyderabad— among the initial set of patients with travel history, who came to India from London just prior to the travel ban. He went straight to Gandhi Hospital and got admitted after being tested positive for COVID-19.
Post-recovery, Akhil has donated his plasma for the treatment of other patients and told the hospital that he would be ready for further medical research.
Speaking to The News Minute, Akhil, who is also a delegate in the National Union of Students, UK said, “It's the first time in history that this kind of situation came up due to COVID-19, that no matter what, Indian students in foreign countries cannot come home."
“According to data that we have obtained officially, there are about 30,000 Indian students in the UK and most of them are panic-stricken. They want people to listen to them and advise them on several aspects. We wanted to help them in whatever way we can and that's why we started this online forum,” he said.
Akhil explained that through their forum, they address two main concerns: first, logistical support, which includes talking to the Indian embassy, crowd-funding and debunking fake news. The second is health-related issues.
He pointed out that about 95 percent of the students are dependent on part-time jobs in the UK to survive there and all of them have been rendered jobless due to the lockdown. Thus, the forum is doing crowd-funding from among the Indian diaspora in the UK.
“Several students think they are stranded but they are not. We are explaining the situation. They are ‘stranded’ only if they are left in railway stations, airports, and on roads with nowhere to go. If they have at least a roof over their head, we are asking them not to panic and stay back in the UK. Meanwhile, we are trying to help them financially through crowd-funding and asking the universities if they could give the students any scholarships,” Akhil said.
The forum has received requests from people who say they have symptoms, asking them what to do, as several hospitals in the UK are not admitting people until ‘necessary’.
“Since I am a survivor and of a similar age to the students, there will be a ray of hope when I tell them not to panic. I advise them to change their lifestyle and improve their immunity power so that their body would be ready for the initial fight,” added Akhil.
And Stephen, who is currently in London, is looking after direct help needed in the UK. The duo met each other through the Clinton Global Initiative, a scheme for next generation of leaders and social entrepreneurs, in January this year.
Speaking to TNM, Stephen said, “We started this in around the second week of April and several people keep contacting us with requests for food, groceries, health and career-related queries.”
“Based on the request received, we connect them to concerned organisations. If people call us saying that they are hungry, we connect them to Akshaya Patra in the UK. If they need to talk to some counsellors, we connect them to experts in the field. If they have any doubts regarding their health, we connect them to the right person to clarify these doubts online.”
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