Yes, It’s officially 5 years since I have quit my job in Cognizant and decided to do full time Social Work with the non profit organization I founded - Team Everest. Dec 31, 2014 is my last working day in a corporate. I wrote a Facebook post 5 years ago announcing my decision to quit the job which went viral fetching 14,000 likes, 1300 Comments and 1100 Shares. The blog post I wrote was viewed by 6.7 Lakhs people.

Let me start with some of the key accomplishments which I feel proud about:

Giving back to Native: Immediately after quitting my job, I went back to my native - Arni in Tiruvannamalai District, Tamilnadu (India) and started identifying deserving parentless & single parented kids to support for their education. I identified 100 kids and started sponsoring their education. We named it as 'Smile 100' scholarship program.

Mom Dad Community Center: Converted our home in my native (Arni) where I was born and brought up into a community center helping 500 children in the community every year.

The Graduation Dream: A survey data says that out of 100 kids who join the school in India, only 25 students go on to join a graduate program in a college. I have seen this personally in many schools that we work with. Students dropping after school education due to lack of money to join college. This drop out rate is even higher for parentless and single parented students. Hence, we started a scholarship program called 'I am the Change Scholarship' in 2016 sponsoring 18 parentless, single parented students for their UG degree as a first batch.

We are currently sponsoring the graduation program of 400 parentless & single parented students.

Introducing computer education to School Children: We have set up computer labs and doing digital literacy classes for 5500 children every day in Government schools. Digital Literacy is not part of their curriculum and hence this is a very crucial skill to teach our children in 21st century.

Global Volunteering Program: We do an initiative called ‘Speak Out’ (www.speakout.teameverest.ngo) where volunteers teach Spoken English to College students. In our last edition of Speak Out, 800 Volunteers from 12 countries volunteered to teach Spoken English to 400 students who are in Chennai. 15,000+ Calls have happened in last edition alone. We built a mobile application that is used to map students and volunteers, access curriculum, mark attendance and raise issues that are resolved within 48 hours. Happy to conceptualise and execute a global volunteering program like this from scratch. I believe this is the first such tele-volunteering global program happening in India.

Corporate Partnerships: When I quit my job, our nonprofit had no partnerships with any corporates. 5 years down the line, we are currently working with 50+ corporates, SMBs and startups on various initiatives and on a different scale. At least 25% of these companies did their first CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) activity after my intervention.

Promoting Volunteering: We built a volunteer base of 15,000 volunteers from scratch who are the backbone of many Team Everest initiatives now. We are still learning and exploring many new ways to engage these volunteers in giving back to society.

Beneficiary reach: We currently work with 40,000 children every year on various programs.

Financial Capacity: When I quit my job, our organization didn't have enough funds to meet our goals. We worked hard and grew financially by 2000% in the past 5 years. Yes, that's 20 times. This is very important to scale our scholarship program and other initiatives to reach more children.

So, is it worth quitting the job?

Absolutely Yes. With loads of time in my hand, I'm able to build a team, identify volunteers, do fundraising and find the right corporate partners to help more children.

So, were there challenges?

Like everyone who is trying to chase their dreams, I too had many challenges in my journey. It required a lot of personal sacrifices, hard work and never say die attitude to keep things rolling.

I should thank my parents, my teachers, my friends and all my mentors in Cognizant who made me the person who I'm today.

What's the road ahead?

1. Scholarship: We will be scaling our Scholarship to new cities in the next 5 years and our vision is to give Scholarships to 2025 new students every year from 2025 onwards.
2. Promoting Volunteering: We will develop new programs and engage more individual & corporate volunteers to give back to society.
3. Corporate Partnerships: We will meet more Corporates, SMBs, Startups and help them in making 'Giving' part of their organizational culture.
4. Reach More beneficiary: We will work towards impacting 10x more children by 2025.

So, how can you help? 

1. Give time: You are interested to volunteer? Sign up as a volunteer now.
   
2. Be a Monthly Giver: Running our Scholarship program requires regular funds. Signup as a monthly donor and donate any amount of your choice monthly to educate a parentless/single parented student - www.hope.teameverest.ngo/join
   
3. Donate: Cannot donate monthly? Make a one-time donation now - www.bit.ly/help2020
   
4. Refer a corporate: Connect me with your company head or CSR head or HR or manager. We love to partner with like-minded organizations who wants to make a difference. My contact details are given below.
5. Start a CSR/Giving Club in your company: No matter how big or small your company is. If your company wants to volunteer and looking for guidance, feel free to reach out to me. I will be glad to help.
6. Follow our work in Social Media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Youtube and Twitter.

Sponsor Me:

For the past 5 years, I'm not taking any salary and working as a volunteer to promote volunteering in our country and to provide quality education to children who couldn't afford it. Check out my giving journey here.

My wife who was working in Cognizant and later in Philips has also quit her job and joined Team Everest full time. Our current family income is 25% of what we use to earn in 2015. My savings helped me for the past 5 years and I will exhaust them in 2020.

Though I don't charge any of our beneficiaries, this world still charges me for all my expenses :).

The only way I can continue to survive in this world is to earn some money while doing my social work.

You can help me by:

1. Sponsoring a small amount every month. Whatsapp me as 'Karthee Sponsor' to +91 89399 12365. Click here to whatsapp me now.
   
2. Connect me with an individual (CEO, VP/Director, Celebrity, etc..) who can sponsor me fully or partially.
3. A corporate can sponsor me from its profits so that I can continue to impact more lives.

Contact Details:

 Call/Whatsapp: +91 89399 12365

 Mail: karthee@kartheevidya.com

 Facebook: www.facebook.com/kartheevidyavolunteer

 Twitter: @kartheevidya

 Instagram: www.instagram.com/kartheevidya

 LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kartheevidya

I have a dream where every Indian volunteer at least once a month. And, I will continue to chase that dream to help more children.

P.S: Whatsapp me at +91 89399 12365 and let's stay connected. Be part of this Volunteering journey!

Thank you!

I love connecting with people.

Let's be friends on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Lesson-1

Scene: Devasena practices hard by herself to master Bow & arrow.

Lesson-2

Scene: Devasena acts as a prisoner in Baahubali Part-1 and as a princess in Part-2.

Lesson-3

Scene: Pig Hunting Scene where Baahubali helps Kumaravarma.

Lesson-4

Scene: Devasena replies to the letter from Sivakami.

Lesson-5

Scene: Baahubali kills the person who misbehaved with girls/women.

Lesson-6

Scene: Baahubali is sent out of the palace. He lives with the common man and helps them by making their day to day job easier.

Lesson-7

Scene: Sivakami sends a letter to Devasena asking her to marry her son. She forgets to mention which Son it is!

Lesson-8

Scene: In the Climax, Baahubali will Promise his mother that he will throw the villain in the fire bed before she completes 3 rounds. And, he does it too!

Lesson-9

Scene: Devasena is arrested and handcuffed even before she is proven guilty as per the rules of the kingdom.

Lesson-10

Scene: In the Climax, the head of the statue is washed away in the water and thrown out in a big waterfall.

Bonus Lesson

Scene (Baahubali-1): Sivakami sacrifices her life to save Baahubali.

Hope you enjoyed. Share your favorite lesson in the comment section and remember to share this blog post with your friends.

I love connecting with people.

Let's be friends on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Note: All pictures used in this blog post is taken from Baahubali official site or from Google Images. The ownership and credits for the pictures belong to respective owners only.

Even the subject line of this blog post would trigger a huge laughter from my wife. After all, she is the one who needs to listen to my boring poems (That's how I call them) :). That's a different story altogether.

Here, I want to write about my first experience on the poems I wrote.

During my School days, I was very much fascinated by how these poets write those beautiful song lyrics. I thought poets have a special brain which makes them write beautiful poems.

I use to read some of the regional weekly magazines where some of the reader's poems get published in it. In fact, those readers are also recognized with cash awards for their poems (Mostly Haiku type). It made me realize that 'Poems' are not just for 'Poets'. Even a common man can write it.

So, I thought, why not I try it out. But, you know what. I always felt that I'm a more a logical guy than a creative one.

But being a School student, I was not aware of being logical or being creative. All, I wanted is to write some beautiful poems.

So, I took out my pen and my diary. I choose a silent, private place so that none of my family members figures out what I'm doing, reads my poem, have a great laugh and embarrass me.

I reached my spot. The page is empty. The pen is full of ink. But, the words did not flow. I didn't know what to write.

Came back home with a failed attempt of becoming a poet. I didn't give up. I wanted to try some other day.

The next day, I don't want to fail again. This time, I wrote something on paper. I was very happy. But, the happiness was short lived. I read what I wrote. It didn't sound like a poem. In fact, it is a 'Sentence'.

One more day of failed attempt...

I want to be a poet, but words are not just flowing. The creative side of me is just not working.

And, that's when the 'Logical Person' inside me woke up. I started paying close attentions to the poems I read, songs I listen, to figure out some common patterns in the poems.

After reading quite a few poems and listening to songs, I made a discovery.

I figured out two common patterns to write good poems during my school days:

1) You should be in 'Love', or you should have a 'Love' failure as many songs are written when a hero falls in love or have a breakup :) .

2) To write some good poems, you need to involve 'Mother Nature' in it. Yes, I found a pattern that there is some frequent usage of some natural elements like 'Sky', 'Moon', 'Star', 'Rose' etc...

I believed, I cracked the code to become a poet.

Option-1 is ruled out as it is too much for a 7th standard school boy to fall in love or have a breakup (At least in the year 1997 in India)

So, I went ahead with Option-2. I listed some of the natural elements on the back of my diary as 'Key Words'. This is what I wrote:

Sea, Waves Cloud, Rain Mountain, Moon, Flower Breeze

Having found the keywords, I'm now trying to add few more words on the front and back to the keywords to make it a poem.

Viola! When I read them, it sounded like a poem (At least for me). I figured out. The little school going kid has become a poet. His logical brain trumped the creative brain in him. Option-2 is working great for him.

I do not remember what my first poem is. But, I'm sharing some of those poems I wrote during my school days:

Dear Cloud, if you cry farmers get happy. Don't you have anyone to understand you? 

Dear breeze, why do you behave like a cyclone to me? 

Dear Sea, won't your waves touch me? 

Dear flower, won't your fragrance reach me? 

Dear Cloud, won't you rain on me? Dear Nature, are you also discriminating by caste and religion? 

Claim the branches called 'Failures', to eat the fruits called 'Success'.

Option-2 worked for few days and the poems dried out sooner. I felt that 'Option-1' has more potential to deliver an infinite number of poems. But 'Love' is so complex than poems for a guy like me. But, I need a girl for whom I can write poems.

I'm very fond of having an elder sister during my school days. I'm only blessed with an elder brother and not a sister. To my agony, a majority of my friends had an elder sister. When many of my friends were looking for girlfriends, I was looking out for an elder sister. To my luck, I found one.

Now, I have a person for whom I can write poems for. More importantly, I have got my first reader for my poems.

Here are some poems that I wrote for my sister. When I read them now, some are so funny and some of them are too good even now :)

If she comes along with angels around, people will ask who is that beautifulgirl? 

Dear flowers did you learn to laugh looking at mysister? She doesn't fade, but why you do?

I am not a natural poet. It's not my hobby too. I just wrote few out of my excitement. I stopped writing poems after my school days. I didn't write any after that. I do not know why I don't write them. I write blog posts. But, not poems. Sometimes, I write one liner quotes that strike my mind on my Evernote. That's all.

After many years, I figured out something about poems. Poems are not creative magical lines. They are not logical blocks of words.

Poems are emotions.

Poems are written to express an emotion.

To tell something more beautifully.

I understood poems are words with souls. You don't need any special skills to become a poet. You just need to feel, enjoy each and every moment of your life. The poems are just hidden in the nook and corner of such moments.

All you need to do is,

Live your life like a POEM.

And, the world one day will say 'Once, there lived a great POET...'.