Grade 10 students starts campaign to provide footwear to poor students
Miqdad along with other students at the Hill Spring International School, Mumbai are raising awareness and funds to give footwear to children in the rural districts of Maharashtra. This footwear is made of discarded shoes that would have otherwise gone into landfills.
Miqdad Khorakiwala, a 16-year old studying in Grade 10 at the Hill Spring International School, Mumbai has started a campaign to provide footwear to the poor children in Maharashtra. His aim is to provide footwear to 100 students who walk barefoot to school daily.
Miqdad along with other students at the Hill Spring International School, Mumbai are raising awareness and funds to give footwear to thousands of children in the rural districts of Maharashtra. This footwear is made of discarded shoes that would have otherwise gone into landfills. The refurbished shoes will transform into comfortable and trendy footwear for thousands of children who walk barefoot to schools. This footwear is made by the Greensole Foundation. The cost of footwear including refurbishment & actual distribution is only Rs 199 a pair.
Miqdad Khorakiwala
Talking about his campaign, Miqdad said, “I am doing this crowdfunding campaign in partnership with the Mumbai based NGO, Greensole Foundation. They refurbish old and discarded shoes with a minimum carbon footprint. These discarded shoes are kept away from landfills and end up transforming the lives of students in rural areas. They also retail, upcycled footwear towards building a self-sustaining social venture.”
The lack of something as simple as footwear (along with school suppliers and toilets) is one of the principal reasons why children leave school. In the rural areas of Maharashtra, the schools are often far from their homes and many children must walk many kilometres to their schools. The walk is across roads, fields, narrow paths and is difficult and unsafe. In summers when temperatures shoot into the 40 and 45 degrees, it can be a nightmare.
Lack of footwear makes this incredibly difficult and often is a chief reason for them to leave a school. Walking barefoot also leads to soil-transmitted diseases and parasites. This leads to sickness and ill health.
The campaign aims to raise INR 20000 or more to give 100 plus rural students the gift of having footwear.
Watch the impact on students
Our News Bureau
Teacher collects excess food from parties and weddings, feeds hungry children
Kundu has been working diligently over the last four years supplying daily meal to the underfed for the last four years. Besides this, Kundu and his associates also cook fresh food every night for street children in at least three places in Asansol and provide the necessary lessons on food education and nutrition.
In order to put a stop on food wastage and feeding more hungry people a computer engineer teacher from Asansol, West Bengal has started an NGO FEED. Chandra Sekhar Kundu, the founder of Food, Education and Economic Development (FEED), collects excess untouched food from college and office canteens every day and distributes it among nearly 200 poor children from Kolkata and Asansol.
Kundu has been working diligently over the last four years supplying daily meal to the underfed for the last four years. Besides this, Kundu and his associates also cook fresh food every night for street children in at least three places in Asansol and provide the necessary lessons on food education and nutrition.
Kundu did an RTI on food wastage in 2016 and found out that around 22,000 crore tons of food grain are wasted in India every year. He found that if only 10 per cent of it can be saved it would be enough to match the government’s arrangements for mid-day meals each year.
Kundu’s life changed forever on the night of his son Srideep’s birthday party in 2015 when he went outside to dump some spare food and found two street children scavenging for pieces of chicken from a dustbin.
Pained by the sight, he brought them home and provided whatever he could arrange. This made him ponder on how to feed these hungry children and stop food wastage. Within a few months of the incident, Kundu made a short film on food wastage to raise awareness on the issue. The effort was largely appreciated by his colleagues and students at the Asansol Engineering College.
Kick-starting his tirade against the food wasters, he set up an NGO named ‘Bengal Save Food and Save Life Brigade’ with his team of students and fellow teachers from the college, who initially collected the extra food from the college canteen and fed 15 to 20 poor children dwelling in Asansol station. They formed FEED in 2016 and approached the canteen owners of a number of educational institutions and offices in Asansol and Kolkata. Today Kundu and his associates have tie-ups with the CISF barracks in Asansol, IIM Calcutta and a few other offices under a project called ‘Commitment 365 days’ where the canteens of the respective organisations provide us with their excess food daily.
“FEED provides daily meals to around 180 street children every day with this food. The street children living under the Gariahat flyover in south Kolkata and a slum in Joka, among other places, are the beneficiaries of the scheme.
Our News Bureau
HRDS to build 1000 homes for tribals of Kerala
HRDS India is a Kerala-based NGO working for the upliftment of the tribals
HRDS INDIA has brought about a revolution in the life’s of 1000 Tribal families in the Attapadi Tribal Block in the Palakkad district by ensuring each one of them has a proper house. Out of this, 300 houses have been completed and will be handed over to the tribal families shortly.
For long the Tribals in various states have been neglected. Most of them don’t have even the basic requisites like housing and clothing. These tribals will now have 1000 pucca houses by a Kerala-based NGO. HRDS INDIA, dedicated for working towards the upliftiment and improving the conditions of the tribal population in the country.
The Sadhgraha Tribal Housing Project is India’s unique initiative started by HRDS INDIA, the only one in the country which caters to all the needs of the Tribals. The Sadhgraha Tribal Housing Project will be a game changer in the annals of tribal history. The NGO has plans plans to build similar houses for Tribals in Jharkhand, Odisha, Tripura, Gujarat and Northeast States of India.
These houses are built by using Fibre Cement Panels – an innovative building material for individual houses in the proposed project site. Fibre Cement Panels are certified green products which help to conserve the environment in many aspects. Fibre Cement Board is composed of a composite matrix containing special grade cellulose fibres, ordinary Portland cement, fine silica, quartz, and some mineral additives. Its main advantages are eco – friendly, less time consuming, easy installation and cost effective. As per the project, HRDS INDIA is constructing 370sq.ft. Pre – Fabricated House for the Tribal Homeless family. Sadhgraha Tribal Housing Project closely follows a Traditional Indian design which includes 2 Bed Rooms, Hall, Kitchen, Attached Bathroom and a small verandah etc. Moreover, it will take only 12 days to complete an Individual Sadhgraha house’.
Our News Bureau
In Conversation With: T Arif Ali, General Secretary, Human Welfare Foundation
“Three out of ten Urban Muslims are poor i.e. officially come below the poverty line living on a monthly income of Rs 550 and less,” highlights, T Arif Ali, General Secretary, Human Welfare Foundation (HWF). He discusses in detail about the activities of HWF which is working towards the upliftment of the poor irrespective of their caste, religion and race.
In Conversation With – Mr Shahid Aboobacker, Trustee, Rehab India Foundation
“There are at least 31 lakh registered NGOs — more than double the number of schools in the country, 250 times the number of government hospitals, one NGO for 400 people as against one policeman for 709 people,”… says Shahid Aboobacker, Trustee, Rehab India Foundation quoting a 2015 CBI report. He highlights the impact and discusses the vision of the Foundation in an e-interaction with Arshia Khan
Editorial – Creating the Goodwork Network!
Having worked in the business and social service arena for almost two decades, it had become clear to me that the business and commercial industry is filled with corruption and unhealthy practices, which has transcended even in the social services sector. There are organisations that have predatory business practices but donate to the CSR and charity sector, and there are NGO’s and social service organizations who profess similar attitude and employ the same predatory operation models. Thereby creating a malignant social atmosphere that may fulfill people’s requirements but end up promoting unethical practices which create the very deplorable condition they fight to uproot. and creating a cyclic disturbing social scenario.
Having said the above, we at Crowdteck.com will not highlight them or any such organisations.
Insights – Why Corporate Social Responsibility is important?
Why CSR is important?
Corporate social responsibility (CSR, also called corporate sustainability, sustainable business, corporate conscience, corporate citizenship, conscious capitalism, or responsible business) is a type of international private business self-regulation. It is also a is a broad term used to describe a company’s efforts to improve society in some way. This can easily be donating money to nonprofits or installing environmentally friendly policies. CSR is a moral factor for companies, nonprofits, and employees alike. Corporate social responsibility is not a mandated practice in some parts of the world, these places it is something extra that companies do to improve their local and global communities. According to various reports the amount that corporations gave to charities last year was around $ 17.8 billion as per different reports.
‘CSR – a voluntary act, not a forced one’
Opinion
Consciousness makes CSR exercise non-obligatory and therefore enhances the awareness of the act of giving unconditionally as well as lovingly, feels Sir Dr Huz (Huzaifa Khorakiwala), CEO, Wockhardt Foundation. The Foundation is dedicatedly working for the socio-economic upliftment of the needy people in collaboration with the efforts of other NGOs and government run programs.
The human mind dazzles at its best when it is blessed with freedom from shackles and constraints. This is especially applicable to the noble domain of Corporate Social Responsibility wherein the otherwise-hard-nosed business leaders turn their focus on to helping needy fellow humans in innumerable ways.
Pune based NGO to recycle old clothes and produce cloth pads for tribal women
A 26-year-old law student, Sachin Asha Subhash from Pune, Maharashtra has undertaken an initiative to recycle old clothes and produce cloth pads for tribal women. The pads will be provided free of cost. Samajbandh, the non-profit aims to provide a cost-free hygienic life to rural tribal women who cannot access or afford high-priced sanitary napkins.