My vision for children

We, CRY America, are running a campaign called “My vision for children”. This is to create awareness about the reality of the situation our children are facing today and encourage people to think, act and participate in helping change the situation.

This actually made me think how my childhood was ?

I never had to worry about what i would eat for lunch or dinner; never had to worry about paying my school fees; never had to worry about sacrificing my studies; never had to worry about comprise my playtime for something else; never had to worry about who would take care of me.

Ok, may be that’s not true, i did worry about my exams and i did worry about getting caught watching cricket late in the night.

So all in all it was a worry free and a playfull childhood. But that was just my childhood and may be yours too. But there are some hundreds and thousands of millions of children  for whom childhood is everything  but worryfree.

My vision for of the less fortunate children is to have a childhood just like i did.

How about you ? You do remember your childhood, don’t you. So you and i know both know what it takes to give these children the childhood they deserve, then why don’t we fight for this together. Because if we don’t then who else will ?

The best moments

A new born opening her eyes and looking at you.
A 1 month old smiling in her/his dreams.
A 5 month old trying to crawl on her knees.
An 8 month old trying to walk.
A 11 month old trying to talk.

For parents, these are the proudest and happiest moments.

But for the same parents, they become the most unfortunate moments, if these babies don t live beyond a couple of years. This is exactly what is happening with millions of kids every day, every month and every year.

Kids die because the parents can t afford to feed them; kids die because the parents can t afford to treat their curable diseases; kids die because of all those reasons that can be very much avoided.

So this diwali, this new year, think about your best moments and then think about those unfortunate kids, the unfortunate parents and think about what you can do to help them; atleast help one of them.

Sponsoring basic education for kids

Yes, that’s exactly what me and my friends decided to do in this year. It took me a while , but i managed to convince my friends from undergrad to take up some social responsibilities.

Once we came together, we decided to pool $25 a month and then came the big question of what to do with this money. We gave ourselves a couple of weeks time for sending the proposals. Since at this point , we were only committed to monetary help , we decided that it would be in the best interest of the group to channel this money through a credible organization and support their projects.

I introduced sam and vonumu organization (vonumu.org)to my friends. Vonumu is good at

• identifying eligible kids for sponsorships.
• establishing one to one relationship between the sponsor and sponsoree.
• providing regular updates of the kid to the sponsor.
• organizing all sponsor meet to understand theie concerns, if any.
• negotiating the overall cost of education with the schools to keep it a minimum.
• selecting a good team of volunteers to constantly monitor these kids.
• maintaining complete account transparency.

We have decided to sponsor at least 15 kids this year at a cost of $140 per year per kid. We hope to maintain a close relationship with the kids we sponsor and also plan to offer more than simply monetary help.
It feels great to be part of this group , BTW , we call this group as SWAS , a breath of fresh air.

The School that has a roof toop !

Me and my wife were looking at some pictures taken by our friends in hyderabad, India. The pictures were of a school in Anikepalli , a village near hyderabad. My wife immediately said ” Not bad, this school has a roof”.

A school in a village is assumed to be with no roof , no proper toilet facilities , no desks or benches or sometimes even without a teacher. I asked my self , is it really that bad ?

The constitution has made free and compulsory education for every child between a certain age group. It took 60 years for free India to realize the importance of basic education, wonder how many more years it will take to really implement this.

Is it really worth the wait, definetly not.

to see what i am involved with http://www.flickr.com/photos/16966302@N00/sets/72157594401209930 

I can do something and this something lead me to join a group of individuals trying to make a difference in the society and we , infact , made a difference atleast to few people in the society and thats a start.

I am happy that i am also doing something more than simply blogging

cheers