Kerala woman gets a ‘thank you’ from Gaza

A young woman from Kerala is making headlines with visuals showing displaced families in Gaza thanking her for arranging drinking water supply for them going viral on social media.

Sreereshmi Udayakumar, the founder of the ‘Koottu’ collective, had, with the help of her close friends and acquaintances, arranged a 3,000-litre water truck to make the supply to around 250 Palestinian families evacuated to southern Gaza during the ongoing conflicts.

Instagram reels show children and women holding boards which read, ‘Thank you Reshmi and her friends from Kerala India.’ “The place where these families are currently staying does have streams. But the war has left them polluted and the children had started going down with jaundice, diarrhoea, and skin infections,” Ms. Udayakumar, who lives in Kochi, said on Friday. “They need around 6,000 litres a day.”

A Palestinian woman displays a notice thanking Sreereshmi and her friends for their help.
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Special arrangement

The water truck reached the families on Wednesday. As part of the humanitarian effort, she had taken the initiative to arrange donations for the families through her friends abroad.

“More than the financial help, the big challenge was getting someone to take the water there. Contacts were collected through the families. A private truck owner agreed to supply the water. We shouldered the cost,” she said. “This is a humanitarian crisis. It can happen anywhere. The families have no food, no water. Everything is expensive and in short supply,” said Ms. Udayakumar, who has been in contact with several families in conflict-ridden Gaza over the past eight-nine months.

“The families say they have no idea how long they will be staying in the place where they are now. They say they have no more places to evacuate to,” she said.

Ms. Udayakumar says it is the duty of everyone to extend a helping hand to people facing such situations. “I view it as such. I don’t see any politics in it,” says the young woman, who describes herself as someone without a passport. Ms. Sreereshmi is married to Yasir.