· Should identify people who hold the responsibilities of different sections with the group, like, president, Vice-presidents, treasurer, branch coordinators etc.
It is better if people who meet every month and who are keen on their free time and unceasing interest can decide it. It is not that we pick people. This is a group where each and every member joined with personal choice. So you should come forward on your own for the roles that interests you most and that you can justify. · The second point may raise several questions, like why? Is this required? or etc, The main aim of the second point is to appoint/select the nominal heads across all the group, to make sure that they represent the group if any issue arise. Also this will be helpful to address the group for others, interested. This is what Dr. Ravinath also mentioned when he visited the Hyderabad meeting. It is just delegation of work for the effective performance. For every issue, we know whom to ask, whom to approach. These are the roles of responsibility but not the roles of power. · Should maintain a perfect record of all the records, like, money got, spent, members in-out, activities along with photos. This will help us a lot. Of course, we are providing the details in the group, but there should be an organized way of reports. Photos will help us in projecting our selves and will serve as proofs which we may think not required now, but will be useful on a long run. Yes. This is the urgent, immediate and important requirement at all times. Reg. photos for all the new cases (from Raju's case), we have been taking photos. Even we are taking photos for the monthly meeting as well from June. · From the new member of the team, Siddu, we got to hear these points > Is this fine if we help the NGO's which will get the funds across the world? How much you think in the works you have done can be projected to the outside world? Is there any organized way that you are maintaining to approach the needy? a) If the organization is doing well and genuine there is nothing wrong if we help it once. This is supporting the cause that they work for. Take for example, MOHAN Foundation: I suggested to be a member of it as a group only to educate all our members that we pledged our organs and also being considerate with the sensitive issue. We need not help regularly or we need not help monetarily but we can help them otherwise by being volunteers. When it comes to Thalessemia, the issue is very different. There are very few donors and no amount of money is enough to take care as there is no certain cure. b) We do not want to project ourselves to the outside world. We are only bothered about the work we do. We need to start somewhere and we started doing medical help and then we sponsored books to orphans and as the members increased, we want to experiment in a small portion of a village about the all-round development of the people there. We display whatever we did. c) Organized way of approach. I didn't get the question. We need to be organized enough to have a systematic approach - searching for the needy people. But we make it a point to find out whether the case is genuine or not - by meeting the needy in person. Most of the cases we found through other friendly groups and Eenadu Helpline. I request Siddu to elaborate the question. · Out of all the above points, it will be the initial members who can answer the questions correctly. But as far as we know about what we are doing, there are couple of catchy things in his questions, one, Funding NGO's, where we, B'lore members started our works with. Is this the right way? The second is the works projecting to the outside world. This point got with lots of discussions with in us. Let the members come up with their point of view. Good questions. By the way, I didn't get your point --- Blr members started by funding NGOs. · The main point is the "ACTIVE MEMBERS" in the group are at least not doing any work, but we are expecting others to take part in the meetings. If we do a consolidated work and if we are able to show the other team members what we have done, what we are about to do, the number of volunteers will definitely increase. For that we should do an event. Event? Your enthusiasm is good. But venturing out for an event as of now is not a proper idea at this point of time. Slow and steady wins the race. Let me share my experience in Hyderabad. First of all -- let the members meet regularly and discuss various ideas for the plan of action. Attending to monthly meetings is itself denotes 'Activeness'. When you are sure of the average number of volunteers that turn up for the meetings and you are sure will be present for an activity, go and observe the NGOs or first observe the other like-minded groups. That way you can know different strategies, different people, different needs etc., Then based on our strengths, we can plunge into action. · Doing the work in pieces, will not be a good thing and we can't tell that we are doing a difference. For that we should confine our selves to a part, differentiate it, then move towards the broader ways. I very much agree. But if you understand the real motto of the group, we want to help where no one helps. Take this scenario. You want to confine yourself to education support. You have enough money. For some reason or other, you cannot find genuine children to help. Then you came to know about a medical issue that needs fund. You will have fund, but you cannot donate. This is the scenario with most of the organizations. As we have different organizations working in various areas, we are concentrating on -- acting as mediators between the donors and the beneficiaries -- stepping in where others do not come forward for help To be frank, my intention in starting the MAD group is --- to let every individual do something for the society -- donate even 100 rs every month for a cause, spend a weekend (with his family or friends) on any social cause --- keeping in touch with other like-minded groups and co-operating with them --- rising to a level where we can adopt a village and then work for the overall development of it. (Definitely we can make a difference that is long lasting). · Doing a work in broader basis and should be a good event, was the conclusion from us and we thought of concentrating on a "village", where the needy will be more in many a needs. If we can MAD in a village, even though it may take years together to do that, but still can be useful for future endeavor. -- Yes. That is what we are aiming for. Anikepalli would be starting point for us. But we need to do enough study of the village. If you people can identify any small area where you all can go and work, that would be fine and we will try to generate enough funds. When we do the work with sincerity, we will get funds. I believe it. I hope everyone agrees with me. We have experienced members who can guide us. Chandrareddy_M -- Through Trinanda Foundation, they are working in his native village. Our new member from Jalamangala, Karnataka has already been doing work in his village. One of my NET friends, who is not a MAD member, also belongs to Karnataka and he is working for the developmental programmes in his village under the leadership of his father. · For this to happen, many a hurdles needs to be faced. We should get the consolidated list, without any cheating, of the problems the villagers face, their medical needs, what the government can do for that, what is the scope of we doing some thing in that, whats the scope of the government, what can we do that the people will utilize all the plans insisted by the govt will reach them. Etc etc and etc Yes. Exactly. So in order to jump into action. You need to do a survey. And you cannot just go like that. You need to have some access to the village. Otherwise no one are going to believe you. It is always better, to boost our spirits, to work in the area that we know, that we have access. I personally feel you can go for a visit to Jalamangala. · The source of inspiration is a village near to hyd got "ISO" certification. If any of our volunteers can personally visit the village, talk to the villagers about their initial hurdles, how they handled them and prepare a case study, present to the team and we can definitely start with that. Yeah. What is that village? Until August, I do not want to go anywhere. Later we will go and find out. or else we can find out from the media. · As a first step, we thought of arranging an event for eye check up camp in any village. For that we will estimate the risks, funds required and etc to make a positive response on the villagers and will concentrate on their subsequent problems. We, me and Siddu will update the group once we will end up with the complete plan. I really feel the need of a doctor member in the Blr group. Dr. Sundar's fiance Dr. Kavita studied in Karnataka itself. With her help, I will try to introduce doctors to the team. We need a good amount of budget for it and we can raise it once we have the plan ready. For that you need to select a small area and should find out the no. of people dwelling there. It is not advisable to just limit ourselves with a check-up. We should buy them glasses, medicines etc., Also medical camps need to be conducted regularly and also we need to complete the work in one place and we should prepare/motivate few members there to follow up on the issues and to take care of sanitation, hygiene etc., Then only our purpose be achieved. · Website was the last in our points of discussion. Can you please let us know who is developing the web? If there are none, then we have a volunteer from b'lore, Vijay, who is good at web design, will develop it. Or if there are many a developers, then the work can be shared across them and can come up with the site ASAP. hmm... I thought of knowing your opinion or rather a consensus for the website name: tomakeadifference.net Please ring to the regular members and find out if they have any objection with this name. We will go ahead registering the name first. I feel is we should be working with the open source tools to develop the site. What happened with the website is .. we have been waiting for the others to come up. Instead of you people come up with your prototypes and we will incorporate all the better features in our final model. I do not think so that it would be a waste of time but it would be like putting our creativity and imagination to test. What do you say? Thank you.
