1. To thank all my friends who supported me in this social cause
2. To spread what we did!! may be you can do the same as well!!
Without spending too much effort on re-writing the whole story, I would like to take you directly to the part of e-mail which i sent across to my friends seeking their help for my initiative.
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Dearest Friends,
It was on 24th June I visited my native place (Chickapadasalagi) after a gap of 3 months. Most of you already know about my village and it doesn’t require any introduction. However I would like mention few facts that it has around 3000+ electoral population and there are 1000+(not all from my village but few come from neighboring villages) students studying from class 1st to 10th.
On the way to my native I was thinking on to do something in the village which should benefit the young and bright student community. During my four days of stay I noticed that there was only 2 hours of power supply per day and which took me to my old school days. You guys don’t believe the way we use to struggle because of power cut and how we managed to study during night. Each one of us had our own lantern (use to make it using medicine bottle and putting a thread into it and finally fill with kerosene). The lantern use to omit so much of carbon that the next day morning we could notice the carbon deposit on the dresses which we wore. Can you guys imagine the amount of carbon dioxide we were inhaling every day? This was not the case of one day but at least for the whole summer that’s our peak exam season.
Believe me even now the situation is same and students use the same kind of lantern. Finally an idea flashed on to my mind thinking whether it makes sense if we provide a solar lighting system.
I met a solar lighting system dealer and enquired about the same. He said a system which can support up to 4 bulbs would cost 16 to 18K. There are two schools (1st std to 7th std and 8th to 10th) and may be to begin with we can provide it for high school (8th to 10th) students.
Now coming to the point, since 16-18K is quite a big amount which I can’t afford on my own. With a hesitant mind I would like to ask you guys to contribute some amount which I am planning to do for the social cause. Kindly note that I have not taken this initiative for my personal gain, I promise do it with utmost transparency and commitment.
If this is successful then my future idea is to start a charity where in we all will be members and at least due to this we might get a chance to see each other to do some charity work. But this might take few months as it involves lots of administrative work but mean time we can form a group and start discussing and what can be the road map..etc.
Also if the student community finds it good then we can meet the Government of Karnataka officials and explain the benefits of this initiative. We can request them to implement this initiative state wide under government umbrella.
Guys, this is my first initiative and I hope you all will support me and be part of this initiative. I have discussed this with Hareesh(Dumma) and he told me its good initiative and we should do it.
'If people like us don't do something for society, who will?
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As a result of this e-mail, within a week we were able to collect the required money to install the solar lamp and we did this in the month of February which was very crucial for students to prepare for the exams.
After the installation, i visited the hostel and I was happy to see students studying under the lamps provided by us.
Currently there are around 30-40 students (studying from 1 to 10th, ITI, DEd) who are getting benefited with this.
You might think, there are many companies who are into social activity and we can contribute directly to them. But I don't beleive that they can go to every corner of the country. The way to do is; if you come across any such need in any place you are from, just see what best you can do and try to help the people who are in need. I HOPE YOU ALL WILL DO SOMETHING!!
May be with our earnings we can't eliminate the poverty but at least we can be happy that GOD has given us an opportuinty to serve fellow human being to an extent.
Before I close my blog, I would like to thank my friends who stood by me and helped this initiative.
Umesh S R
Umesh M R
Gautham
Hemanth J
Sandeep L R
Sachidanand Prabhu
Shreekanth Acharya
Akhil S
Hareesh K
