Prabh Aasra

Disaster and Flood Relief in Punjab

When Punjab is hit by natural disasters, Prabh Aasra is one of the first organisations on the ground. During the devastating Punjab floods of August 2023, the Prabh Aasra team based in Padiala became a lifeline for flood-hit families across Sardulgarh, Hoshiarpur, Tanda, and Firozpur, running rescue operations and providing medical care, food, and support to affected farmers as the water receded. In the same period, when an embankment breach near Bara Mandir Colony in Kurali sent floodwater into homes, the team built a protective embankment, redirected the flow, and helped restore the river’s natural course to bring the area back to safety.

The organisation’s disaster response scaled up further during the Punjab floods that began on 16 August 2025 and continued for weeks afterward, among the worst the state had seen in decades. Prabh Aasra reports having rescued more than 2,000 families across over 30 villages, running a mobile medical unit around the clock for both people and animals stranded by the water. The response did not stop at rescue: the organisation has continued into a rebuilding phase, helping affected households restore homes, farmland, and livelihoods in the aftermath.

This pattern of emergency response is not new for the organisation. In April 2015, Prabh Aasra sent relief material and volunteers to support survivors of the Nepal earthquake, delivering food, tents, clothing, and medical supplies in partnership with local groups. In September 2014, it mobilised aid for the Srinagar floods, dispatching truckloads of dry rations, blankets, and medicines to stranded families. It also responded to the December 2015 Chennai/Tamil Nadu floods with ambulances and essential supplies, and in 2008 carried out a water restoration project at the Tarapur Majri Dam, drilling a borewell that revived the water supply for several villages whose crops and livestock were at risk after the dam ran dry. Taken together, this body of work — rescue, relief, and post-disaster rebuilding — is the basis on which Prabh Aasra has been added to Prakati’s directory under the NGO category: disaster response and climate resilience work that directly supports communities in Punjab facing the impacts of extreme weather.

About Prabh Aasra

Beyond disaster response, Prabh Aasra is best known in Punjab as a long-running home for the helpless. Founded in 2003 as the Universal Disabled Caretaker Social Welfare Society, the organisation was started by S. Shamsher Singh and Bibi Rajinder Kaur to care for individuals who had nowhere else to turn — orphaned, destitute, abandoned, mentally ill, or living with physical disabilities. What began as a small shelter has grown into multiple centres in Punjab, including a head office and shelter campus at Village Padiala (Kurali, Tehsil Kharar, District S.A.S. Nagar/Mohali) and a centre at Pherurian, Raikot, in Ludhiana district, with a third reported to be under development.

The organisation’s core work is round-the-clock rehabilitation: shelter, food, medical treatment, and a family-like environment for residents who would otherwise have no support system. A significant part of this effort goes into family reunification — through an initiative the organisation calls Mission Milap, Prabh Aasra has reported reuniting over a thousand residents with their families after recovery and the revival of their mental health.

Healthcare and Emergency Services

Prabh Aasra runs a charitable, non-profit hospital on NH205 in Chanalon, Kurali, offering accessible treatment regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. Alongside the hospital, the organisation operates a free 24/7 ambulance service for emergency and accident cases, a mortuary van and machine service for nearby areas, and an assistive-technology programme that supplies oxygen concentrators, hospital beds, mattresses, and wheelchairs to people who need them. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the organisation distributed thousands of monthly ration kits, masks, and sanitiser, and ran a free medical camp for farmers during the 2020–2021 protests, serving tens of thousands of people with medical care, physiotherapy, and free medicines.

Education, Vocational Training, and the Cradle Programme

For residents able to pursue it, Prabh Aasra provides general and special education alongside vocational training — including computer classes, general duty assistant (GDA) training, tailoring, and sports — aimed at building transferable skills and a path toward independence. Since 2007, the organisation has also run a baby cradle programme that gives abandoned newborns, particularly girls left vulnerable to abandonment, a safe and immediate place of refuge.

Why Prabh Aasra Is Listed on Prakati

Prakati’s green directory exists to surface organisations working on the practical side of sustainability, and that includes climate adaptation and disaster resilience, not only clean products and renewable energy. Prabh Aasra’s repeated, hands-on disaster response across multiple flood events in Punjab — rescue, emergency medical care, and post-flood rebuilding of homes and farmland — represents exactly the kind of community-level climate resilience work this directory aims to highlight, alongside its long-standing charitable mission for the state’s most vulnerable residents.