The Culture of Giving.

This post was inspired by the post I read on my friend Sormita's blog.

It stated the story of a 6 year old, named Maaike who chose not to take any presents on her birthday. Rather asked all her friends and their parents to donate to one of the two charities pursuing the cause she recognised with.

She managed to raise Rs 3500 for planting trees in and around her neighbourhood in Banglore. 

Now this story would surely have been inspiring, motivating any day. But this story reminded me about Venkat Krishnan, an entrepreneur with a social cause at his heart. He is our common PGP graduate from IIM, Ahemdabad (1993 batch). He worked with Times of India, Sony Entertainment Television, but then quit the corporate life for a startup school Eklavya. He was part of the school for about four years. And then moved on, to establish another organisation GiveIndia.

I would like to quote an excerpt from their first ever annual report. It is supposed to be a paragraph which he hopes to see in the annual statement of the company for 2020.

"Dear Stakeholders,

 We are pleased to inform you that GiveIndia has closed down. Donors are now active, they are finding NGOs, they are engaging with them, they are giving money directly and they don't need GiveIndia."

This extract should give the essence of the passion driving this idea. The idea for this non-profit financial exchange for connecting common people to NGOs germinated while he was travelling extensively through Europe and USA to research about the education system there so that he could improve upon his own school. The very idea is that the difference between the people there and back here in India is that they have a sense of ownership towards their country. They recognise with its achievements as well as its problems as their own. Paying taxes is not a kind of statement to the government that, "Okay, we did our part. Now do whatever you want to do with it. Just don't get back to us to harass us even more." Everyone is held accountable for whatever they did and whatever they did not. And instead of just blaming the government for whatever that is wrong with the society they decide to participate and do their own bit of whatever they can do. 

The idea of GiveIndia is that it is not big charities or corporate donations alone that cultivate a change in the culture of a place. It is us, the common people who when change our attitude of neglect towards the problems we face and see on a daily basis that revolutions take place. And today with ever more financially secure middle class we are a lot more recipient to the idea of giving. But again the very first thing which hits us is, who do we give to. How do we ensure that the money given is not wasted but utilised properly and how do we ensure that it is spent on a cause we recognise with. This is where GiveIndia comes in, to give everyone a platform to find the causes they want to work for, and give to NGOs working for it. We get to choose whether we feel education is more important than food, or how our money is spent.

Just like Maaike chose to recognise with a cause she felt about. And she not only chose to do something about what she believed in, but took a sort of ownership to the cause. After all we can never convince ourselves to spend our hard earned money onto something which we do not have an emotional attachment to.

blogosphere link of giveindia: http://giveindia.blogsome.com/