What?
This is how my tweets looked like starting from Oct 6th to Oct 9th (people had trusted me with $3000 with in 72 hours)
Why?
This picture in BBC headlines reminded me of my village and I wanted to do something about it no matter how small. So I decided to raise 3000. It was all on the spur of the moment. I did not know why I chose a region in India I don’t even understand its language. I don’t know who and how I wanted to help once I have the money. But none of these details were important to think about at that time. I just wanted to start with a faith that I can figure these things out once I am literally on the field.
How?
1. Technology
On Oct 6th I sent out a message asking people to donate to my cause. What was my cause? I wanted to change one person’s life( most likely an entrepreneur) in the region which was washed away by flood. To my surprise within 72 hours, I had more than 3000 in my Paypal. It would not have been possible to do it so fast with out technology.
I used FB causes application to create a cause.
I know charities,esp the ones far away, don’t have credibility among people, so I decided to go myself to the affected area and get first hand experience of the situation. This meant that people can not use Causes to transfer money. Paypal was my only option but that also meant that people had to trust me with their money.
Transparency has its virtues in these situations. So I used Google doc to list out all the details of the fund raising.
2. People, people and people
Everything else would have been useless if it were not for everyone who trusted me.
Thanks to all these people for their support:
Deepak Sridhar, Sachin Gandhi, Shuchi Rana, Baat Enosh, Prasad Boddupalli, Aihui Ong, Jazmin Hupp, Srividya Vemulakonda, Xue Jessie, Aryata Agarwal, Sashadry Divakarla, Jitendra Deshpande, Paresh Upadhyay, Neil Fernandes, Niraj Sharma, Karl & Fernanda, Mehran Bazargan, Sanjeet H Desai, Anonymous, Nitasha Verma, Vajji & Charu, srinivas sabbella, Alok Nagdev , Milan Mantri, Ruchira Modi, Vinodh and Mythili, saurabh shrivastava, Priti & Jayanto, Anonymous, Amit Gohil
Puneet Thapliyal, Anonymous, Surekha Saharan, Jitender Hooda, Naveen and Sakina, Shaherose Charania, Amanpreet Sidhu, Niharika Mateti
Next Step?
I am waiting for immigration document I need to travel outside US. I am hoping to receive it within weeks time frame. Hopefully till then basic facilities would have worked out for the affected people in the flood region and our money can go towards a sustainable business or something like that.
I would like to believe that all extra ordinary things must have started with ordinary moments like these when you just wanted to do something, no matter how small, about things. I hope I have such instinctive moments more often and I wish everyone find things they are passionate about.