During school and college days most of our time is spent with our friends and the bond grows so strong that it seems to remain forever. But as time passes we get separated from each other because of different reasons and we hardly have time for friends. When I found this I found that our time is spent on work that we take up in different work places to improve our career and earnings. YUVA was that genuine and naïve attempt to keep the crowd together connected with a cause so that we friends can stay together, work together and create beautiful things to this world around us. Its been an amazing journey, few things have worked as I thought, many things haven't worked as planned. Though the hidden objective for which YUVA was formed hasn't actually fulfilled, I realized that for whatever time my crowd has spent together it has been able to give its best and made YUVA a live organization and realize its true responsibilities towards the society at large than just mere a platform for friends to stay connected.
As most our friends from colleges got engaged in their personal life the time that we spent on reaching out to the people in need from various walks of life through our own ways of planning, raising the funds for the same by going for door to door collection, to researching on the best product and services available in the open competitive market, working on integrating the best possible solution for the problems at a affordable price, to actually procuring it and transporting it to ground zero, making it work there, has helped us as an organization which is capable to work at the grassroot level with the beneficiaries themselves. Though the scale of reach was very little, the loop of bringing down workable solution to the ground and demonstrate its working with the budget and its lifespan on different projects has made us feel confident and compitent to take up any problem head on.
One of our major projects in these 10 years was serving food kits to the needy during the Corona times, we were able to reach out to close to 10000 families who were supported by crowdfunding through just online means, as it was a time of complete lockdown across the world. We could support them for a period of 50 days of an average family size of 4 people. The funds raised then through peer groups was in tune of Rs.5L.
Our first project too involved door to door collection and it was about bringing solar based solution as an alternative to the harmful kerosene lamps. Though the story would seem like a year back, but solar energy and energy efficient LED bulbs as a movement, was in a nascent stage in the year of 2012. It was then the organization was registered as YUVA. It was formed as streE ( Sustainable Technology and Renewable Energy for Earth ). The idea was to work on making energy clean, efficient, accessible and affordable. We realized that energy was not the only sector which needed attention but a whole lot of things connected for the survival of the poor or the lower middle class ranging from the basic commodity of food on plate, cloths to wear and a decent shelter to sleep under.
Though we observed that these commodities did not reach to the needed ones, our naïve and enthusiastic minds and hearts came across an experience that was totally opposite to what our thought process about the world that we wanted to work upon was, and this came from the four walls of the classrooms that taught us what was in books and the protective compound walls of our school and homes. For someone who is completely new to such a world would see it as a lollipop snatched away from the hands of a new born. It was a afternoon hot summer day, and we had just installed a grid based solar energy system, first of its kind that we were testing, that brought LED lights to 5 families and we invited to have lunch with Gram Panchayath Head. We reached a school that did not have any students or teachers but the rooms were used as a kitchen to cook food for the people who gathered. We realized that the rooms of the school were used to prepare Chicken and Rice to over 50 odd people and the same place was used to distribute liquor and CASH as their guarantee for VOTE. I usually defer to share stage with people who are against my thought process, at least then in school days, this incident was kinda eye opener. It questioned my core as to why this hard work when the very core of the system that we came out to correct was headed by people who did not really care for what the poor really needed. They exploited their idea of decent living that they never lived. Through these corrupt means they kept these blind in darkness, be it with kerosene lamps or rightful denial of the education that their children had the rights over, the health services that should have been saving the new born or the mother who needed the attention during the most difficult phase of life or the husband who had the responsibility to bring food on the plates of his family member or the emotion, that of going to sleep empty stomach with a thought that the money that he is going to get for pressing a button that merely had any impact on his routine life would bring food on his plate for the next one week, because these people live by the day. The helplessness of the one accepting the cash to vote on the hindsight which no one really bothered to think about pushed me to decide as to whom to share the stage with. This stance of denial has made YUVA an organization par comparison with any of the NGO's out there. Post that event, the first and foremost thing that I decided was to change the core of the system which the political system, that decides what we eat, wear, work and how we live. Since there wasn't any alternative system in place that could be pointed out towards, which people could see and experience first hand, we decided that our projects will be a more collective, organized and a demonstration of an alternative system of working that could replace the current political system in place in the years to come. Our resources, volunteers and reach was through a very tiny and close network of people, we made sure our projects never compromised on the way the people were reached out to, be it the clean sources of funding or people who wanted to be part of our projects.
AND THATS WHAT SETS US APART AND THATS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW 'ABOUT US'
Now that you know about us, we want you to know the urgency of #thefirst1000mavericks PROJECT
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We cannot solve the problems with the kind of thinking we employed when we came up with them.
Albert Einstien