Chronicles of Social Change Agents

your philanthropy story

the idea behind it was actually

germinated at the imb aluminized summit

called

imbue in december 2015. it started with

a session from kiran mazumla shaw

and azeem premji talking about

philanthropy the art of giving

in the session they did talk about when

you think about philanthropy you think

about the big names you think about they

are saying primary foundation you think

about the bill and melinda gates

foundation

you think about the birla trust but very

rarely do you hear positive stories

about common people like you and i who

can be social heroes

and they said that there is a lack of

platform that kind of covers those kind

of positive

stories that can be heard to people to

inspire them to do more

that’s where the idea germinated shivo

koteshwar and i

were attending that session we stepped

out of the ballroom where

the you know the event was being held

and

behind a paper napkin the idea of your

philanthropy story actually germinated

and you know it’s been a great journey

so far we’ve heard some

really inspiring stories people who’ve

created change and who’ve impacted lives

in many ways

but of all of this i think the first

story is really very close to my heart

because i remember i did go and speak to

guru prasad

of guru and jana it’s just it’s a large

ca form

in fact they work with some of the

coolest and the biggest startups in

bangalore i’m sure a lot of you all in

the audience will be working with them

soon if

you know if you already don’t have uh

any relationship with them

in that in that meeting guru said a few

things which really struck my heart and

you know and struck the code in my heart

and i felt uh you know this was an

organization that that i really

was happy that i would start the entire

platform with

he said they were structured guru and

jenna as a social enterprise

he spoke to me about their internship

program they received about 1500

applications for an internship program

every year

they select 20. the 10 of them are

tire one um you know top ranking

students who are cas you know people who

are studying for c

and who are looking to intern with them

and the other 10

are from tire to tire 3 or rural

background

but below average students the idea is

to create a platform

where you can get people with you know

who have and have nots and give them a

platform to

actually an equal platform for as a

stepping stone for them to be better

in my mind that was wonderful how many

people do you see

uh or organizations do you see people

doing this

the second story uh you know in that

same interview which

which really moved me was about ram the

receptionist he’s visually impaired

i remember the first day when i went

there i was introduced to him

and i was surprised that you know he had

a great photographic memory

he knew numbers by heart he knew

people’s names he knew which

organization

but what really surprised me was when i

went back

to meet guru to take a couple of

pictures

you know he recognized me by just

hearing my voice and apparently he does

that

um you know regularly by either the

perfume that somebody wears or just by

listening to their voice and that blew

me away

and i was thinking if one person can do

so much

of a difference can you imagine how many

more people are there

that you know we haven’t covered and we

haven’t heard the stories

um we quickly realized after about four

or five interviews that

you know for us to sustain the quality

of interviews that we need

we really need a strong advisory team

without which we wouldn’t be really

able to make the justice or create the

impact that we were looking for so we

have a very core

advisory team in place who help us

identify people

whom we can go and reach out to and

cover as well as wet through the entire

process of

you know figuring out which could be new

areas so in this process we’ve also

introduced

a youth social model where we are

looking at

you know young students who are actually

giving back to society as well

fast forward a few years and we had done

multiple interviews

in the area of education we met this

really amazing extraordinary person

called mr shuklabos

who is the founder for the parikrama

foundation and

you know she does a lot of work with the

slum children in bangalore

and she was speaking about how you can

go back and enhance the quality of life

for a child

by ensuring that you are educating this

child and

once you educate the child it can have

impact at multiple levels

right through enhancing your hygiene

levels working through

you know ensuring that your younger

siblings are also

then wanting to learn or you know

inculcating a joy of learning

as well as looking to see how you can

actually uh

look at the standard of life itself at

home because you are being educated a

lot of the alum and i actually come back

and contribute back and they become

great role models for

these younger children a lot of this

actually stayed back in my mind

and that’s what really shaped our

journey going forward because we were

then

thinking about what can we do to

actually bring about further impact

this led to our setting up the pelaku

trust bellocum canada main slide

the first of the project in balakoo

trust is running a supplemental

supplementary education program

in a small place called hangarapura it’s

about 120 kilometers from bangalore

we have 108 students who are part of

this program

and we do bi-monthly sub you know

classes in the area of steam

which is science technology engineering

arts and mathematics

i still remember how this whole

conversation started i walked up to

shiva and i said i think shiva we have

to go back to be doing something back

with the students to really create that

impact in brutal children

he had just then set up an

infrastructure in his farm in

hangarapura

and he said smitha if you think you want

to go ahead and you said over the

weekends

feel free i still remember my father

always felt that change had to come from

within and you can’t

expect it to be anywhere outside so

that’s where i started

you know a srinivasan spoken english

program working with students

we said we have to take the plan some

time so we did the

you know announcement in the classes and

bang on day one

on the first class i still remember we

had 28 students

i was thrilled because i said this is a

experiment that we’re looking to run and

i had 28 students that i could really

work with

the students had fun because we had kind

of gamified and we had an engaging day

one

um and the second week i had close to

about

46 students um you know and i was

extremely thrilled and i said wow i mean

you know we are doing something right

here which is why the children want to

be coming back and working

with us and learning from with us um

they class three

i go in and i wait for an r and i have

zero students

and i’m disappointed and i said

something’s gone wrong and then suddenly

i hear a child saying

can you come and meet with the village

council miss i said okay

and uh you know both of us walked past

walked by and we went to the village

council

and there i heard that somebody had gone

back and spread rumors that we were out

there we were no good we were out there

to actually

you know steal heart and kidney and eyes

of all of these students by drugging

them

and that’s why we were doing this and i

was appalled and i said

i was doing this because i wanted to

create an impact i sat down

shiva and i then you know spoke about

the larger vision what did what is it

that we wanted to do

the different styles that we want to

adopt with teaching

and i was pleasantly surprised that the

villages actually have

a great pta system we had four parents

who kind of volunteered

at least for the first two classes to

come and sit through our sessions

we said they are more than welcome to

come for the classes there’s only

one condition that we had that the

teacher the student

and the teacher can only be inside the

classroom

the parent had to be waiting outside and

there was a place for them to be seated

they would eat the same breakfast and

they would eat the same lunch that we

were providing for the students class

one happened class two

and uh when i went to pick up the

students for class three i asked the

parent that i typically talked to

uh about the you know folks who are the

parents who would be actually coming and

sitting in the class that day

and he immediately looked at me and he

said

sorry miss that even we doubted you we

are

extremely apologetic i think the

students are really learning

um they seem to be spending lot more

better time

or being better employed and i think

it’s a lot more safer that they are with

you in your classroom

than for them to be roaming around the

fields or roaming around the village so

they were very happy and that was a

great hurdle to get by

i think what we’ve also done over the

last three years is to

look at what can we do to actually make

lifelong learners

out of and inculcate the joy of learning

with our students

and we’ve done that with a great

volunteer network uh who are

really skilled and specialist in their

area that they come and they engage with

us

it’s been three years and you know

fundamentally we just measure on one

which is are our children happy are they

happy to come to a class

are they happy attending the class and

are they happy when they’re going back

from class

is it anything that we are doing here

does it result in any form of happiness

to the child

and i think equally important is how

happy are my volunteers because if they

aren’t happy the quality of

education or the quality of engagement

that we will have

with the with the child will dip a

byproduct of

all of this is also that we’ve seen the

hygiene levels go up

over the last three years we’ve ensured

that the children are washing their

hands they’re clean when they come to

the classroom

so generally the hygiene levels have

gone up second because we’ve inculcated

the joy of learning in them

the school dropout rates have also

reduced third is

actually we’ve created a uniform

platform or

you know created a a scenario where the

haves and the have nots economically

are also being treated the same so they

all sit in the same classroom they all

sit next to each other when they have

their meals they have to all wash their

plates

after they’re done eating and we’ve kind

of taken off those biases about you know

especially around the

economic barriers or parity that used to

exist in the village

what we’ve been also able to do is uh

you know do away with the biases that

come

either with disfigurement or disability

in the classroom

uh we have a girl her name is meenakshi

she has a fairly large burn mark on her

face

um there was a lot of buyers a lot of

the children did not want to be sitting

next to her in a classroom

and she was always left alone so i

watched this for a couple of classes and

then i

decided that one way to do this is to

bring about some form of intervention

i gamified the next few classes what i

did tell is

in my english class i was going to you

know go back and play damsharats

mind the word or the sentence that we

were going to be learning over

uh you know that next few classes uh

before i did that what i did do

observe was meenakshi was very good at

picking up people’s expressions

she could go back she could express

herself back really well

and she could also mine back so i i got

her to be my primary partner and told

her that

whichever group minds this and gets the

line right

they get a special price quickly the

class caught on that you know meenakshi

is an asset to have

and all of them were really clamoring to

have her as part of their teams

as the classes went long over the next

few classes

and what was interesting is what started

as

some kind of intervention today there is

natural acceptance to actually have

meenakshi sit with them

you know they ensure that they wait for

her they ensure they help us into the

transport

vehicle they ensure that you know she is

fine i think

that for me is a larger impact that

we’ve been able to bring about

bellago is looking to do three key

projects

in 2020 project number one is nyanakone

the idea is to how can we give access to

the kids the youth as well as the adults

in remote areas access to a computer

this

then expands and gives them access to

knowledge that is outside of the remote

setup

uh nyanakone will comprise of a small

you know construction which will be

perfect you know which will be

completely sustainable

and which will be supported by renewable

energy in terms of

solar panels and ultra capacitor

batteries

and uh you know it will comprise of very

simple peripherals like a computer

a mouse and a keypad and a small printer

a local nearby uh kiosk or you know

store will actually manage the

day-to-day management or operations for

the yanakuni

and students can either take printouts

or they could have meter time

30 minutes to an hour long meter time to

come and use the computer

because predominantly research has shown

that they have

very little or very limited access to a

computer in these remote areas

the second project that we’re looking to

do is uh 100 kids and 100 smiles

in in bangalore we do see that a lot of

the areas have a lot of construction

work and

they which in turn means a lot of

children uh one such case is in

uh bangalore north in hibal it’s an

upcoming area there is

a lot of construction that is going on

right now and which also means a lot of

children who are

there in that area and who either go to

a private school or a government school

and the view was how could we then give

them

an a full uh well-balanced meal

extremely nutritious

but you can’t just feed the stomach

right you need to enrich the mind as

well

so we’ve identified 500 key

life skills that we can go back and

train this is again through

the vast network that belco has

developed over the last few years

and getting them to in turn work with

these children

it’ll be a 30-45 minute session where

there’ll be a volunteer talking to the

students about

or the children about a life skill and

then they will should be followed by a

meal

the third program that we’re doing is

called the beluko learning expedition

it is to say a big thank you to the

public servants

um or the public service um

you know professionals who are actually

serving us it could be people from the

police department

like constables children or it could be

people from the fire department

or it could be the bbmp barakah makes

children

whom we want to be going back and

working with in in hibal and in

bangalore

uh the idea is uh you know these kids

already go to a government or a private

school

can we then take them on a learning trip

um ensure that you know they

are served with a nutritious meal and in

the process they learn by

seeing something or by experience

something and

for example if you want to learn about

fishes can we take them to an aquarium

and can they see this aquarium and can

they see the fishes and can they learn

more

these are the three projects and we’re

looking to launch all of these

uh in 2020 i’ve always felt that

change can’t be external it needs to be

internal to the

person and each of us can actually come

back and be that change that we’re

looking for

inspire people to come back and give

back i still remember

after the you know after a few classes

uh a child came running to me right

after class was over and said miss miss

please take this mango it’s really sweet

and i said

why are you giving me this mango um and

he said

miss this is the first mango in my farm

and i want to give it to somebody who’s

you know made a big impact on me and i

want to give it to you i think it’s

about doing the small things

it’s about listening to your instincts

it’s about taking action and i think

each one of you

can be a social hero thank you