COVID Response - telephonic helpline service

COVID Response runs a telephonic helpline service to offer crisis counseling and psychological first aid to all citizens across India. This service is open every day from 10 am to 7 pm. In partnership with Delhi Commission For Protection of Child’s Rights (DCPCR), Government of Delhi, and technical support from Indus Action, helpline number 011-41182977 was live from 7th April 2020. Crisis counseling is a form of intervention that aims to provide immediate psycho-social support to individuals who are undergoing any form of an emergency situation that may pose a threat or danger to their functionality or wellbeing. The objective is to offer timely and effective counseling services to children, adolescents, senior citizens, people with clinical disorders, and health care professionals. COVID Response’s approach is to work as a collective with mental health professionals and post-graduate students with a background in Psychology and Social Work who volunteered to dedicate a part of their daily life, apart from their full-time profession.

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Accelerating Growth of New India’s Innovations (AGNIi) is the National Technology Commercialization Program of the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India. It is one of the nine Missions under the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) and executed by Invest India, India’s National Investment Promotion Agency. AGNIi focuses on supporting innovation commercialization: helping government, enterprise and non-profit sectors benefit from emerging technology innovations from Indian start-ups and the public R&D ecosystem.

AGNIi is an initiative of the Government of India to bring innovation and society closer together. The initiative will help connect innovators with the industry and market and create the necessary synergies driving India’s innovation goals.

AGNIi offers a gamut of services to help innovators: connect with the industry to scale up, offer expert feedback on design and strategy, provide opportunities to network and connect with other ecosystem players, help with technology validation support, open opportunities for funding. By providing a platform for innovators to scale up their market-ready products, AGNIi will help propel India into a new era of inclusive socio-economic growth.

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AGNIi as a pro-bono national technology commercialization platform can help corporates in identifying technologies that can be implemented under CSR initiatives. These technologies can be from both Startup ecosystem as well as from R&D labs or academic institutes. We would also like you to note that the scope of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been expanded to include funds spent on incubators funded by Central or State Government or any agency or Public Sector Undertaking of Central or State Government. Moreover, as per Circular, No 05.01.2019-CSR funds spent on COVID-19 related activities shall be considered CSR. This opens up a unique opportunity to support innovative solutions to combat COVID-19.  Recently, we were successful in facilitating the implementation of one of these technologies in Chandigarh and Varanasi. You can read more about the engagement at Press Information Bureau, GoI.