When childhood friends Sajid Shariff and Revathy
Muralidharan went to college in different Indian cities, they wanted to
start a voluntary organisation and serve the underprivileged. Distance
and lack of time conspired against them and their noble intention
fizzled out. They still live in different cities — Sajid pursues
management studies at Stanford University in California and Revathy, who
is a lawyer, practices at the Madras High Court — but, thinking
out-of-the-box, they have circumvented this problem and turned their
long-time wish into a reality.
Teaming with two
others — Palak Dalak, a software engineer working for Microsoft, USA,
and Luigi Wewege, a partner at Nikau Global, a New Zealand-based
international trade company — Sajid and Revathy have launched
doinggoodfellows.org (a virtual launch is happening today) that serves
as a link between a broad spectrum of Indian NGOs and professionals from
diverse fields that are filled with the spirit of volunteering. With
his skill set, an expert who has come on board serves one or more
voluntary organisations that may be looking for someone like him.
The
most significant feature of the arrangement is that experts work for
the NGOs virtually — for example, a pamphlet writer in New York can
‘donate’ his word skills online to a voluntary organisation that serves
street children in New Delhi.
To illustrate the
effectiveness of this model, Sajid cites a study on the sense of social
responsibility carried out for a project at Stanford University.
Seventy-two per cent of the young urban professionals quizzed in the
survey wanted to do good, but only 12 per cent of them ended up being of
any practical use to society. Sajid gives the main reasons for this
discrepancy — unwillingness to donate money but an eagerness to help in
kind thwarted by a lack of system to have the things delivered to NGOs
and personal commitments leaving them with little time for field work.
By
inviting professionals to just share their expertise and networks and
by creating a system that reaches things donated to NGOs,
doinggoodfellows.org tackles these barriers to doing good, says Sajid
and adds that similar models function successfully in the West.
The
team at doinggoodfellows.org matches NGOs with registered individuals,
based on commonality of interests. Among this online NGO’s strengths is
the fact that registration is not automatic. The team gets acquainted
with everyone that wants to help out, says Revathy. Fellow cultivation —
whereby the experts are groomed and sensitised to various societal
needs — is another feature that facilitates a closer walk.
Doinggoodfellows.org
is a not-profit organisation and, at present, is sustained by the
resources of its founding members. Sajid explains: It will always remain
not-for-profit, but when a fulltime team is in place the option of
collecting a small fee from the NGOs may be chosen just to meet running
costs and keep the initiative going.
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