Hi Chaitanya, You provided a very good perspective, view points from a different angle.
Let me answer to the questions. 1. By setting up an orphanage how many are we going to help and reach? Until and unless we are complete with our study/ground work, may be we cannot come to a conclusion on how many we can reach. 2. Arent we re-inventing the wheel as there have been many who have already made such efforts and working along? More over we have always said that we do not like re-inventing the wheels but to support the existing ones. Yes. We definitely do not want to reinvent the wheel. But there lies a difference. One single organization cannot fetch its wings to the entire breadth of the city. We might have seen Restaurant Chains and Movie Chains, Retail Outlets etc., spreading over different cities. Did we see any orphanage and old age home setting the same in different cities with the same name? (I do not have any idea. I am asking this question. Not an argument). What I mean to say is that we can study everyone, learn from their mistakes, implement all the good ways that people follow and try to set up the home to our expectations. To learn from others, to study is the basic idea behind the ground work. This is not about re-inventing the wheel but an effort to optimize by accepting all the good approach and shunning the not so good or a failure model. 3. Old Age home has its own set of problems totally different from orphanges.. so have to channelise on both of them separately to do justice to the idea. I think I would have explained it clearly in the first mail. Old Age Home in the sense not for the ones like we saw in Prema Nilayam. The purpose of old age home beside a children's home is to provide a truly homely environment to the kids and to the old people (who are good and healthy enough to be grand parents to the children and who are living away from their children for various reasons). The ratio of Kids and Old people would be something like 15:2. 4. Would the model solve the root cause of it or are we just being intermediary to help those affected? Shouldnt we target the root cause then? :) For the second part of the question, my answer would be the title of our group and the story behind it. I will give answer to the first question in the answer to the subsequent questions. There would be no single root cause for any problem. Most of our problems are interlinked and it is a viscious circle. Aiming at a bigger goal of understanding the root cause (if any one or many) and willing to solve it doesn't mean we do not experiment or we shouldn't try. Coming to trying with the other organizations or people who are half way in their journey. Yes. We have to. But there are many many problems if we want to involve with them. As long as we are outsiders things would be fine. But once we try to be the decision makers or want to experiment with new ideas, we will face problems. Manavatha group was inspired by the efforts of Sri Raghunath of Shirdi Sai Anathasramam and wanted to support him. He said he identified many children (orphans, semi-orphans etc.,) and he wants to somehow provide to all of them. But at present, it is really difficult for him to manage. He is a completely spiritual person and leaves everything on Baba. Manavata group wants to support those children by setting up a home and looking after the children that he identified. But this didn't happen. Why? Ideological differences. Raghunath garu insists to be in his own way and Manavata group has its own ideals. As such both are genuine groups. Leave alone this example. Why did we come up with TMAD group and why didn't we be active volunteers in some other groups which are doing very well and which follow principles strictly? We wanted to be different and we, as a group, are likeminded in more ways than one. The more we differ ideologically, the closer we are and grow fonder of each other and the mutual respect too grows. May be it is the way that we approach the problems, discuss an idea and work together on a consensus. Ultimately it is the uniqueness. Uniqueness not for uniqueness sake but for the purpose that we feel. 5. What is it that we want to acheive through this project? Be one more model helping the destitute people or be one to show solutions to the most people and kids for a better tomorrow? Achievement in the sense, yes, we want to achieve. We want to achieve a change in the mindset of people about orphan homes and about education, about growth and development. Whatever change we want to perceive, we want to experiment with a select set of people and then replicate. Through children home we didn't mean another shelter home. If this is a success, we can be an example to the orphanages (or any such homes) to be self-sustainable and do not depend on external donations. In this way, we not only provide employment to few people, we also creates a sense of family in all the members who are associated with the children home. The employees are the care takers of the children and they should earn as if they earn for their own family members. Coming to your idea of developing government schools and reaching out to villages, they are very good in spirit. Again what about in action? We have to do a similar exercise here. BHUMI adopted 4 govt. schools in Mehboob Nagar and they tried in Rasoolpura too. They did a lot for Rasoolpura school. What they decided is to set up their own school instead of relying on the existing school. We can talk and discuss with Rakesh more on this topic. Success in govt. schools depend on the attitude of the teachers and the internal politics in the school. If everything is fine, we can definitely help the school to reach to next level. How sure are we? How best we can keep up the efforts? How many of us are interested? Coming to reaching out to villages, we have to take time and listen to Dr. Giri and should attend his proposed session. He is already working and as he mentioned in the mail he is half way through. He also met many eminent people from all walks of life, he attends many meetings, he meets many groups like us. In fact, he joined our group to know more about us and to guide us wherever necessary and to explain us his ideas and efforts in that direction. I request everyone of us to reply to Chaitanya's questions. In answering them we give answers to ourselves and we can understand where we are. Also when do we plan for a session of Dr. Giri? Are we interested to spend two more hours on our monthly meeting day? Can we ABVP for a lunch and continue the session? I actually wanted to propose the July month meeting on a Saturday (5gh). Murthy garu of Muscat already booked tickets to Tirupati as he is also coming on a short trip. Actually Prasad Charasala garu has to leave on 6th evening itself. So how about arranging our monthly meeting on Saturday, 5th of July?
