A long mail, but please do read and give some good thought. Come up with
your own ideas, I am sure you will have some if you knock ur brain :)
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About my statement on wht wud they've done if we werent' around,
(referring to when I mentioned so in Divenas' case), if we wud've helped
them then and others in similar situations paying secondary expenses, we
wudnt' really be in a comfortable position or reserves to help Mr. Paparao
today, when necessary. Tht was my thought behind it. Tht where we can
avoid, we should avoid, and restrict it to the patient directly. Here in
this case, Mr. Paparao is the patient. If it was about Divenas' education
or such, I would've never asked us to take a step back. Hope I am putting
through my thoughts properly :) Unfortunately, we have to pick the most
needy of the needy, and start from thr, becos of our financial limitations
as of now. Hope we overcome this barrier soon, as we grow more & more each
day.
About Mr. Paparao............mmm........I dont' think I can really put
down the emotions I went' thru, reading the detailed mail. Let me mention
something quickly here, before I deviate myself in another direction :
In the last MOM (which just reminds me I have to post this month's MOM -
nothing concrete to mail though) I had left a line at the end saying we
would discuss it further in the next conf call. It was about how we could
add senior citizens into our area of service. Since most of our regular
members cudnt' join the call this month, and we had more of new members, I
didnot bring this point up for discussion. The conf call turned out to be
more of an introductions and Q & A call on TMAD and its activities.
Jotting down some quick Ideas I have in mind:
- Wht are senior citizens good at??? Patience compared to us (in
most cases) & years of knowledge thru experience.
- What are their constraints??? Lets say energy levels, stress, may
be health, and physical strength to an extent.
- Who and what kind have we come across (Pardon my english..if it
sounds more like I am talking of apples) ..
MMM....Raja rao gari types someone who is retired, but still keeps
the spirit to serve, whrever he can.
Mr Paparao garu on the other hand, who is badly in need of
livelihood, and is more than willing to earn it.
I was trying to see what we can really do with these people, something
thru which they can earn their livelihood and/or serve the society, together
or on different projects.
Days back we were talking of adopting a school or buying one, and I myself
didnot think this was a good idea. I am still against putting in so much
money.
So from our end, I think this is what we will look for :
- Low budget Investment
- Risk free to the max
- Once a while supervision should suffice, cannot spend day in and
day out supervising the project
- Should be something where there is less dependency on us, for
various day to day tasks concerning the project
(We cannot be available all the time to help decide or
troubleshoot)
- A return on investment would be a added bonus, something we can
reinvest or streamline into our service end
So on......thts all I can think of quickly for now.
Keeping all of these in mind, lets come up with some Ideas on what we can
do. Like for example one of the thoughts I have :
Why not investment upto some 50k and put up a stationery shop???
Lets see wht it involves:
- Rent a shop - whtevr it costs, close to some school or a Xroad
somewhr, if thts too expensive, then we look for some other options, like go
to schools and explain abt our organisation and take orders for notebooks
and so on. We can get hundreds of ideas like this.
- Buy stationery in bulk, like buy directly from NANDI or LEPAKSHI.
Talk to them about TMAD again and get some concessions.
- Train Mr. Paparao into selling and buying of these, and
maintaining the tasks on a regular basis. Shudnt be too hard.
- We can check once a week, or twice a week, and all members
interested can take turns into checking the ledgers.
- Ratan will always be thr to help our with the taxes and all tht
legal end.
- Best part is, we can always ask ppl to come up with donations for
this Project, for buying books and so on.
- Mr. Paparao can be paid a monthly salary, an amount tht will
suffice his living with his wife in a decent fashion, plus thr wud be his
pension to add to it nywys.
These are few ideas I have in mind. If none of the members come forward
with investment, its ok, I will myself come up with the initial investment,
but I would need some of our local chapter members to support the field work
involved with this.
I am somehow very confident, this will work, if we put some good efforts
into this.
If any have more or better ideas, please put them here in detail. I would
love to read ur suggestions. We might be able to help many this way, adding
them into this project, and paying them according to their work.
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Some more scrambled thoughts, adding to the project:
- Go to schools, talk to the heads and teachers or parents directly
tht they can support our cause further by giving us orders for notebook
covers etc. Those brown sheets we cover notebooks with, instead of them, we
can do it for them, say for a rupee or two per book. We can surely beat
their price if we buy those brown sheets in bulk. Local stationers make a
lot of profit selling them in retail, which we can inturn cover & show as an
incentive if parents let us do it against a small price.
- We can add more older couples or needy into this project, and
teach them. Small scale project tht will earn some good needed petty cash.
Ppl like LN's husband, he can earn a day's food for sure this way.
- I can ask my dad n mom to join into this aswell. Mom luvs to help,
and dad will be retiring soon. Prasanthi's parents can join too, and any of
our other members' parents. All in one place will not be a feasibility, but
someone can rotate books, or we can do it on local school to school basis.
- We can get many more ideas like these. Seasonally thr are many
things tht come up in schools. I am sure we can meet many of these, if we
really put our heart and mind into the project.
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I am soo sorry for a super long mail. But some very honest thoughts I
would luv to see put to work.
Pls let me know what you guys feel, even if u believe otherwise.
I ts really not the path that matters, its the destination. So even if its
another project idea you have in mind, its more than welcome, provided it
serves the purpose.
- Divya
