We can apply make-up on our faces, own the most expensive car but that cannot make anyone rich at heart or can fix the dryness of the soul. For that, one has to enrich their soul with kindness and love.
Young school kids from a Mumbai-based school are collecting funds to help people in remote villages in Vidarbha region to walk again with the help of artificial limbs. This is a superlative example of the fact that kindness knows no age and education helps further to be compassionate and serve the society.
Children from Bombay Schottish School in Mahim has teamed up with a doctor who is coordinating the project and supporting their cause. While talking to TOI, Dr. Sunder Subramanium, of the NGO, Freedom Trust said, “It’s heart-warming that these young children have taken this initiative to such a height.”
The campaign will end on November 19 and the initiative will have a positive influence on the lives of 400 disabled people. The cost of each limb can cost up to Rs. 10,000 and therefore, the students have set themselves a target of raising minimum 20,000.
You may click here to contribute and make someone smile.
While 100 children have met their targets and some of them managed to collect funds beyond the minimum amount. Four of them have collected more than Rs. 1 lakh in just 10 days. Also, by the end of the campaign, the students hope to collect Rs. 50 lakh.
According to the TOI report, Ansh Patel, who is studying in class XI tapped his parents’ contact lists but was worried in case people fail to respond. “But, once I started sending messages, the response was great,” he said.
“Helping people makes me happy,” said Maryam Mozayan, who has also raised Rs 1.34 lakh so far.
Apart from that, two other class XI student- Dia Parasrampuria raised Rs. 1.43 lakh with the help of her father and Saachi Kamat, who collected Rs 1.28 lakh was amazed at the response from strangers. “About 80% of funds I received came from people I didn’t know,” he said.
Ranganath Thota is the founder of ‘Fueladream’, the crowdfunding site on which the funds are being collected. From classes 9 to 12, as many as 156 of these students have participated in the campaign and collected more than Rs. 46 lakh through crowdfunding till the time of publishing this post. Compared to their target, they are currently 158% funded with 6 more days still to go.
The funds, which have poured in from 1,428 people from across 165 towns in India, will not just offer the villagers a prosthetic limb, they will give them mobility and a “new shot at life,” said Thota.
American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once said- “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
With the help of these kind souls, the villagers with physical deformity can stand on their feet and walk again!