Monday, September 8, 2014

Fwd: Urgent appeal for Rahat Floods..

An Appeal from Goonj




Dear Friends,

You must be following the news on the worsening floods in Jammu and Kashmir. While we are working in some states already struggling with floods, the J & K floods are taking on the magnitude of Kosi and Uttarakhand floods. The upcoming winters are only going to add to this nationwide calamity. Goonj is trying its best to reach out relief in J & K and other states. 

This is an URGENT APPEAL to join GOONJ for 'RAHAT FLOODS'We urge you to initiate pan- India campaigns in your offices, schools, colleges and get each one from your network to act.. 


Urgent requirements-

a) Material: Large quantities of good quality blankets, woolens, tarpaulin, basic medicines, utensils, good quality solar torches, buckets, torch and batteries, umbrellas, water purifier tablets, crutches, candles, rope. Also- Old flex banners, mats, contributions for Sanitary pads & Sujnis. Please make sure to send the material to the Goonj offices. Here is the list- http://goonj.org/?page_id=2272 

b) Monetary contributions- for logistics and essential purchases. (All monetary contributions are tax exempted u/s 80G) please click below for the easiest option to transfer the money; 

Do send your full name, address, tel. no, for receipt purpose to priyanka@goonj.org as soon as you transfer the money for the receipt purpose.

c) Logistics support; Material transportion from our offices;Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata and the additional collection hubs to the affected areas. 

Goonj is also keen to create collection hubs in more cities, if anyone is interested in opening up a temporary centre, do write back to us. 

Do spread the word. Use your face book, twitter, e-mail and websites to spread the message..  

We will be updating status on www.goonj.org and on our face book page http://www.facebook.com/goonj.org regularly. Do write to us on mail@goonj.org or call 011- 41401216, 26972351 for any further queries.

Let's do our bit!!

With best
 

anshu
--

Anshu Gupta
Founder Director
GOONJ..



Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Help needed for a baby

Email received from Mission Heal

Dear Saviour,

Please find attached an urgent case of Baby Archana (6 month old) who is struggling for her life at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi She has a hole in his heart at such a small age. Please spend some time to go through the attachment and the entire mail to have a fair understanding about the case and the situation of the patient.

 

Mission Heal is taking initiative to save the life of this poor child, as we have taken this step we encourage/request you to come forward with us to help this innocent child financially. Your generous contribution can make this child live.  

Ø  Baby Archana was shown in AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) on 19/04/2014 when she was 6 month old. Her father's name is Parmeshwar. This family belongs to the Village Ghanapara P. O Ghutku, P.S Koni. District Bilashpur. State Chhattisgarh. 

Ø  She is suffering from heart disease (a hole in the heart). Her treatment is going in for large /VAD/TGA/Mod. TR

 Ø  Baby Archana's consultant doctors are Prof. R.  Juneja and he has suggested a heart surgery for this baby and  which is very urgent.

 

Ø  AIIMS has given the estimate of Rs 1, 45,000/- as a cost of surgery

 

Ø  Her Registration number is CV 2014/014/0009691. UHID 100213351 & Department is Pediatric Cardiology 

 

Ø  Her father Parmeshwar works as a labour and earns only Rs 150 to Rs 200/- per day.

To help this child, please support us at: http://missionheal.org/emv/





Wednesday, March 5, 2014

PARDADA PARDADI EDUCATIONAL SOCIETY

An interesting initiative:


Pardada Pardadi Educational Society (PPES) has been working towards improving the socio-economic status of people in rural India through the empowerment of girl child and village communities since its establishment in 2000. PPES is based in Anupshahr, a tehsil at one of the most backward districts Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh (U.P). 

 

Uttar Pradesh is one of the lowest performing states for social and economic development indicators. The region is infamous for widespread poverty, crime, child marriage and large out –of school population. Therefore, our mission at PPES is rural development through the education, employment and empowerment of rural girls and women. PPES is setting a model of development through gender empowerment in rural India.

 

In order to achieve this, PPES provides free education to girls and job opportunities for women, thereby, creating a new generation of self-reliant and educated females who will break the cycle in the region. 

 

In addition to the education and economic empowerment within the organization, PPES has also developed both a community development program as well as a health and hygiene initiative to uplift residents. Moreover, they have launched a Self Help Group Program for women from within surrounding villages and a rural call centre program. Their previous interventions- The solar lantern project, the toilet Project, Rags to Pads and Community Hygiene Complexes-have received tremendous response from the community.

 

The founder, Mr. Virendra (Sam) Singh sowed seeds of change when he returned to his ancestral village Bichola and founded Pardada Pardadi Girls Vocational School (PPGVS), an all girls’ school, to bring academic, social and economic empowerment to rural girls and women. 

Having born into a well off conventional feudal family, Sam (as he is mostly called) during his growing up years witnessed regressive customary practices of caste system and gender bias towards girls and women.

After completing his engineering degree from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Sam moved to USA in 1963 to pursue post-graduation in engineering from Lowell, Massachusetts. He joined DuPont in the same year and worked extensively on various assignments mostly in the north-east area of the USA.  He was transferred to Asia in 1989 and retired as the Head of Dupont, South Asia in 2000.

All the 40 years that he lived and spent in US, made him question how to bring dignity and uplift the status of girls and women of rural communities, who are often taken as a liability than worthy individuals.

In order to seek answers to his relentless questions, he went and stayed at the holy Dalai Lama School in Dharamsala, (India) in November 1988. This time allowed him to conceive a model which in line with the Dharamsala philosophy.

Inspired by the self-sustainability model of the Dalai Lama School, Sam was ready to set up a school based on the universal educational values and livelihood generation skills. His belief that the patterns of violence and poverty can be broken by helping the community’s “weakest members” laid the foundation of Pardada Pardadi Educational Society (PPES) in year 2000.  

The first batch saw enrollment of 45 girls, of which only 13 remained by the end of the year. Mothers would often ask who will marry their daughters if they were educated. These questions led him to dream bigger for the girls and rural India. This made him base his school model on a hard core business model, focussing on the girl child believing that she would multiply the development through her family and community.The battle was tough but armed with his belief, he kept moving and devised innovative strategies to counter challenges.

Since then, 13 years have passed and today PPES fulfils educational needs of over 1250 girls coming from 62 villages of Anupshahr. The Pardada Pardadi School educates students from kindergarten through 12th grade. The school pays for the girls’ uniforms, books, three daily meals, and transportation, also offer the girls a scholarship of Rs. 10 from 6th grade onwards for each day’s attendance. The school curriculum includes studies in computers, science, English, arts, and current affairs. Students attend school 6 days a week, from 8 am to 5 pm. These girls receive education, which is empowering them to change their lives and become the model of change for others to follow.

The first batch of 13 girls graduated in 2006. The institution has given 227 graduates to the community till date. In 2010, the school attained the affiliation for grade 12th. Girls are encouraged and supported for higher education in universities and training schools there upon. PPES graduates are either working or earning an income, or pursuing higher studies sponsored by PPES. Some of them are training to be a nurse or a computer programmer or a fashion designer among other enterprising professions. Presently, PPES is sponsoring higher education of 20 girls. All these are pursuing professional degree courses in Bangalore, Noida and Jaipur.

The organization came up with many innovative programmes like- gifting bicycles to girls, constructing individual toilets at the homes of girls, community toilets for villagers ,manufacturing of sanitary napkins as part of community health & hygiene programme, vocational centre under the livelihood generation and economic empowerment initiative. Focussed interventions on girl child education, health-hygiene, community development and economic empowerment have brought required changes throughout the community.

 

Pardada Pardadi Educational Society, which started as a girls’ school broadened it’s realm and entered into arena of Rural Development. Self-help groups for women, rural BPO, dairy cooperative and micro enterprises are its recent interventions.  

Sam for all these efforts has been acknowledged and honored at various national and international levels. He has been the recipient of many coveted social service awards- The Real Heroes (2012), The Rays of Hope award (2012), Gillette Blade of Honour (2011), Sat Pal Mittal award (2012), Godfrey Philips –Social Bravery (2009), Champion of Social transformation (2011) and Lifetime Achievemnt award (2013) to name a  few.

Sam was also featured in an All India Radio -radiomentary "Anoopshahar Mein Gandhi," which highlighted his unique institution and Sam’s work won the Public Service Broadcasting Award for Gandhian Philosophy for the year 2010.

 For future, Sam wants to replicate the model and reach out to prospective partners who share the same vision.

 Read more about them here:
FB :https://www.facebook.com/pardadapardadi.org?fref=ts
website: www.education4change.org


Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Support this hospice for terminally ill children

I received this mail a few days ago and the concept touched me deeply.

Dear Kiran, 

Greetings!

My friend Abhishek and I have been working on a project since February 2013. We are starting India's first Children's hospice. As you must be aware, a lot of children die every year due to incurable/terminal illnesses. It is heart breaking but true. 

While we cant do much to keep these children alive, we can certainly do a lot to ensure that the last few months/days of these children and their families are as painless, peaceful and memorable as possible. 

Hospice is a concept of care that is extended towards people who are dying. This is where people will get a lot of emotional, psycho social and spiritual care. Unfortunately we have evrey few hospices in India and none exclusively for children. This is where we are making a difference. 

Abhishek and I are starting India's first Children's Hospice, we are calling it 'Happy Feet Home'. This is going to be in partnership with Sion hospital (one of the leading government hospitals in Mumbai) 

We are working on this since Feb this year and it has been one brilliant journey!

We are at a very important juncture with our venture and we need all the help and support for it. 

We have started a crowdfunding campaign and are now LIVE on indiegogo, the crowdfunding website that will help us raise funds so that we can start India's First Children's Hospice! Check us out here!!!

This is where I need your help and support. Please go to the link above and get to know about our campaign. You can help us in multiple ways - 

1)      Contribute – Crowdfunding works when several people make a contribution for your cause. You may chip in whatever you feel like and every penny will only      make us reach closer to our goal.

2)      Make us famous  – share the campaign on your facebook, share this email with your friends, tweet about it, spread the word as widely as you can.

3)      Bore your friends to death  – talk to your friends about us, let your circle know the need of hospice and what we are doing.

4)      Spam - share the info on the hospice on your office intranet.

5)      Connect – Put us in touch with your friends who you think will be interested in helping in any way possible and we will take it forward from there. 

It is a huge amount we are aiming to raise and we need all the support to do that. 

Link to the campaign - http://bit.ly/J6C9dd
New Indian Express article - http://bit.ly/18Yf4WV
Huffington Post - http://huff.to/1dnNWNN


Love, 
Mansi 
If not you, who... If not now, when??