Check out my campaign page: https://www.fueladream.com/home/campaign/809
Please click on UPDATES for details of the children who will benefit from my campaign.
Here is my presentation video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9tfKvFLaq0
http://www.hindustantimes.com/more-lifestyle/children-are-crowdfunding-and-using-the-money-they-collect-to-do-good/story-GvRmBum2BJMRI0k2uWBT8L.htmlhttps://www.thebetterindia.com/110128/15-year-old-crowdfunding-%E2%82%B92-lakh-kids-suffering-heart-disease/
https://www.peacerun.org/
IX exams were just over, X had started. The previous few months had been gruelling and I was in a daze. That’s when I found out about a crowdfunding campaign that my school was participating in.
Ashita Ohri is an ex-senior from DPS Bangalore North and is now working with FuelADream, an online crowdfunding platform, that had made many dreams come true. Now, she was helping organise the crowdfunding for the DPS BIG HEARTS campaign which had already enlisted fifty of my schoolmates.
We were to collect funds for life-saving heart surgeries for underprivileged children suffering with Congenital Heart Disease. Their poor families could not afford these surgeries. And without these surgeries, these children would die.
How could I sit by and watch?!
This was the first ever school initiative of its kind in the world and we had big names supporting us. Rotary Indiranagar and Needy Heart Foundation were the ignition behind this essential cause and Jayadeva and Fortis (Bannerghatta) Hospitals were to conduct the surgeries at a heavily subsidised cost. A typical cardiac surgery costs between two to five lakh rupees, but these charitable institutions were making it happen with just over one lakh rupees per surgery. All I had to do was get as many people together and collect forty thousand rupees. The gap would be filled by other resources available to the various partners on board. If I did that, I would have saved one baby in need. I would have saved one life.
After some frantic co-ordination, profile writing, getting back home and discovering that Mili ma’m (Mili Srivastava) of FuelADream had also been in touch with mum regarding some extra permissions and information (as I am a legal minor) for my public campaign page, I had one late-night telephone briefing pending with Ashita. That complete, my campaign was ready to go live. Check: https://www.fueladream.com/home/campaign/809
The DPS BIG HEARTS campaign was already into its 2nd week and I had lost any hope of a head-start. But, hey, this was about saving lives here and I still had 30 days left.
So, the first thing I did after breakfast the next morning, was to send out my first messages and calls. I started with family and close friends.
I have collected funds before for various causes but that was very basic and most of it happened through door-to-door collections. The sums were small to medium. But my goal here was forty thousand rupees! This was a big target. Plus, we were working off an online crowdfunding platform. No cash-in-hand situations could be had with this one. My funders had to be internet savvy. Or I did. This was cool!
Just how quickly cool turns hot, I saw in the next few hours. Mum and dad’s phones were apparently pinging every now and again with contribution confirmation messages (Yes, all my accounts are ‘supervised’. I tell you!). My phone was ringing off the shelf with callers trying to get past the payment page. Others were hoping that I would just take cash and do the needful. Eventually, we had to do that too as some tech glitches came along the way, but I pushed as much as I could for direct online payment.
The miracle of charity came home to me then. A few people were eager to donate the entire campaign amount right up. Some I knew, some I didn’t. They were so taken up by the cause, they didn’t want to wait. Mum and Dad requested them to give the campaign a few more days and allow some more contributors to come in, before making such a large donation. They understood. I didn’t.
But I did understand something about the human race. People are generally, very kind.
Quickly, I learnt another lesson in human psychology. If I accepted the full forty thousand right away, my campaign would be completed immediately. The passion to work towards a goal, the determination to close a deal or the motivation for others to help would be deterred as the job would already be done. Keeping the campaign open for the longest possible time would bring in more people to participate in this cause. This was a cause that was important not just because children’s lives were at stake, but because precious young lives were being lost to ignorance. Of course, poverty played a massive role too. So, apart from raising funds that were necessary, I also had to raise awareness. This would need a wide out-reach. I needed time for that. And lots of funders.
“Saving a life is not a small thing”, mum said, “my effort had to be proportionate”. Dad emphasised the idea of a “fair sense of achievement”. I got it.
It worked!!! Many kind hearts called in and my campaign was clocking contributions continuously. It crossed forty thousand rupees in less than 24 hours.
All I had done was send out my appeal. A few SMSs … Mum and Dad had put up ONE Facebook post each. There was one on LinkedIn too. I had called some of my extended family and friends and had asked them to share my campaign link further. That’s all.
It hit me then. This was not forty thousand rupees I had collected.
I HAD HELPED SAVE A LIFE!!!
Doctors save lives. Soldiers save lives. Paramedics save lives. They are trained to.
I am 15. I go to high school. And I had helped save a life!
This was a defining moment.
My age, my inexperience and my sheltered childhood didn’t matter in the face of this great cause.
My research showed that CHD was a very common ailment across the world. In India alone, 1.5 lakh babies are born with Congenital Heart Disease, every year. That shook me. What followed was worse. 78,000 of CHD cases, die! What really got me annoyed was the fact these 78,000, can be saved, if only they get treatment in time. What comes in the way? Ignorance. These cases simply go undiagnosed – all over the world. But after they get to know, what stops them then? Bad health care facilities. And in India, poverty.
I had campaigned for the Blind before, for children of villages, for orphanages, care homes… all important causes in themselves. But this, here, was a baby’s LIFE – this was something else.
So, I got thinking.
One day had got me one life. Effort: minimal. Mode: social media.
Counting out the week I was away in the hills with sketchy signals, I had four weeks of holidays available to me. Sick children needed help and with funders still coming in, and really generous ones at that, how could I stop now?!
I sat down with my parents and after some brain storming, drew up a new goal. So far, they had put up a couple of posts here and there on social media. Together with my few calls and WhatsApp messages, we had funded one surgery in 24 hours (well, 10 minutes, if I count the awesome folk who were waiting with 40 k for the go-ahead from me). We still had time left – what would we have to do to make this bigger? Well, a surgery a day would be crazy to aim for. After all, magic cannot happen all the time. But one baby a week? That seemed reasonable.
So, one baby covered. Four more to go.
We made the call to my largest contributor, Ms Merine Joseph. She had waited patiently and her forty thousand took care of the second baby instantly.
Three more to go.
I called folks and friends, again. I asked them to call their folks and friends. And they called theirs. My parents and their contacts posted on Facebook, LinkedIn and whatever else they could access. I hit WhatsApp and Messenger. And I kept my phone charged.
The power of positive social media was here to see. In no time, we were now a large network of people, all working for my campaign. The more I enlisted, the more my campaign grew. As did the collection.
And then, we were covered in the News.
Mrs Manju Balasubramanyam, my school Principal had already started sharing the campaign on Facebook. I could see that people from varied fields were acknowledging these updates. With wider media coverage added to my Principal’s endorsement, I had more to tell my network.
There was greater credibility, now. More motivation. I had to go all out.
I started checking my campaign page again and again. I was stuck to the phone, helping funders. I was navigating them though the process and closing contributions. People had gone to great lengths to help this cause – it would be a shame if tech glitches came in the way of saving an innocent’s life.
Fresh posts were put up and a new batch of updates were sent out every time there was a dip in contributions. They would pick up immediately. We did this till the last week.
The willingness, the generosity and the patience people showed, from all over the world… was insane! It was humbling…
At campaign WEEK 5, my campaign had 52 funders. I was gob-smacked! 52 BIG HEARTS from all over the world, some not even known to me, had come together in less than 30 days for one common cause.
But to cover the fifth baby, I was still twenty five thousand rupees short. There were just a few more hours left for the campaign to close. Mum and Dad had pledged their support and had stood by rock-solid, to make my dream come true. At the last hour, they came good again.
I closed my campaign with a total collection of TWO LAKHS and FIVE HUNDRED rupees.
Five cardiac surgeries, FUNDED. Five ailing babies, SAVED.
Why?
Because, as the campaign says, children do not belong in hospitals.
They belong out there, kicking a ball, laughing, throwing a tantrum because they lost a lollipop. They should not lose their lives to poverty.
On June 12, 2017, along with me, all the 44 of us, campaigners, were felicitated by my school DPS-BN, Rotary Indiranagar and Needy Heart Foundation at an amazing event at school. Together we had collected nearly 17 lakh rupees which would fund 41 surgeries. But because my individual campaign collected the most (funding the surgeries of five children) Ranga sir of FuelADream asked that I give the school and attending dignitaries a presentation on how I went about achieving this huge goal.
If my funders had humbled me with their enormous kindness, the standing ovation and love I received from all present, gave me moist eyes. I left with an eternally grateful heart that Monday morning.
I have captured my humble success story in a nutshell, in this presentation. Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9tfKvFLaq0
The goodwill continues with people still sending me blessings, congratulatory messages and, most importantly, enquiries on how to pitch in.
This is but the beginning. And I hope you are moved enough to help me increase awareness on Congenital Heart Disease. It is a common ailment but goes untreated due to ignorance and poverty. So please talk about it and spread the word so that we can beat ignorance and stop poverty from taking innocent little lives.
The progress of the children who will be supported through my campaign,
1. Baby of Deepa (01 month old);
2. Baby of Omkaramma (05 months old);
3. Manikantan (05 yrs old);
4. Rohit Roy (08 yrs old); and
5. Mallappa (13 yrs old),
has been updated on my campaign page: https://www.fueladream.com/home/campaign/809
Do keep checking and let’s wish them luck.
Beyond this, please make your own difference felt – there are many more children out there, who need it.
crishmish 