These are 3 NGOs we have interacted with recently.

PaperArtz: As a child, I always painted cards for birthdays and holidays. While they did not look professional like printed greeting cards, they had a personal touch. Even now, when I visit my older relatives, they will often fish out a card I had drawn for them years ago, to show my daughter :)

As far as possible, I make Urvi draw greeting cards, too. And PaperArtz made our job easier!

It is a unique initiative, where your artwork is printed on a set of 12 greeting cards, which you could now share with friends and family. They have tied up with several schools in Bangalore (including Urvi's) where a part of the profits from the greeting cards thus sold, are used to support local charities.

This is Urvi's contribution for our holiday card this year.

To see how you can get your artwork printed, or how you can support them, visit the website, http://paperartz.org/


GOONJ: This is an award winning NGO doing absolutely fantastic work at the grass-root level. One of their many initiatives is 'Vastra-Samman', providing clothing for every man, woman and child on the street. Unlike most other NGOs who will take only wearable clothes in good condition, GOONJ will take just about anything. Even scrap clothes will be re-stitched and put to good use.

We recently organized a clothes collection drive for GOONJ in our community. The response was overwhelming. The effort, among other things, gave me an opportunity to meet many of my neighbours for the first time, and I feel fortunate to be part of a community with such wonderful, generous and conscientious people. To know more about GOONJ and how you can organize a similar drive in your area, visit their website www.goonj.org. They have also tied up with Pantaloons where you can drop off your old clothes in any of their showrooms in India.

Twinklers Public School:

Another social initiative taken up by our community is selling of old newspaper, and using the money thus generated to fund local charities. The children of our community are most enthusiastic about this project, and once every 3 months, you will find a host of them running around, ringing doorbells and carrying heaps of newspaper for this purpose. In the last 1 year, we have managed to generate Rs 54,000/- with this effort alone!! The money has been used to support many local charities, from slum schools to old age homes. We prefer not to donate in cash, so we generally visit the charity and find out what their requirements are.

On one such visit, I went to Twinklers Public School, run by the Samvrudhi Trust. This is a small orphanage school in JP Nagar, Bangalore, where about 70 children are receiving free boarding and education.



It is a very nice set-up with small classrooms and volunteer teachers. I was especially impressed with the quality of the work done in class. In the higher grades (VI and VII) they do not have more than 2 or 3 students, but the Principal, Ms Sunitha does not want to send these children to the free government school, where she knows the quality of education would be far below standards. As always, the main problem with running such schools remains funding and availability of volunteer teachers. If you know of anyone who is willing to volunteer, or can support the school in any way, do pass on the information.