Hi friends,
A very new happy year to all of you. It's not just a new year for me. It's going to be a new journey as well for me. As many of you are aware, I have quit my full time job to chase My dream of promoting volunteering in India. My dream is to motivate every person to volunteer atleast once a month (12/365). You can read my complete post on this topic here.
I will be working 1 week per month as a part time contractor in my old company itself in 2015. It means that, I have 3 full weeks to experiment new ideas, initiatives to see how it goes.
For those, who are not aware, I'm the founder and first volunteer of Team Everest which we started in 2006. The major focus of Team Everest is to promote volunteering and provide quality education to children who could not afford it. You can learn more about Team Everest in our website - www.teameverestindia.org or our facebook page.
Here are my first 6 months goals:
1) Mom Dad Community Center:Set and ensure the Mom Dad Community Center initiatives goes on smoothly. We had set up a computer lab, yoga classes and study center in this home. Will be ensuring that the first batch of students have a quality learning experience in the center. You can read more about this initiative here.
2) Smile 100: This is a key initiative where I will be spending my maximum energy in first half of 2015. We are planning to identify 100 parent less and single parented children from Arni, Tiruvannamalai dt, Tamilnadu and sponsor them till they finish education. So it involves a lot of efforts in identifying right kids, doing home visits, interviews etc. It also involves identifying a right school and sponsors for this intiative. Website development for this initiative is also something I will be involved in. You can be a monthly donor and sponsor a child by registering here.
3) Starting the Everest Bangalore Chapter: A lot of volunteers from Bangalore have reached out to me to start our initiatives there. Hope we will be starting it in March 2015. We are already in Chennai, Coimbatore and Hyderabad. We are coming to few more cities in 2015. Stay tuned :).
4) 50+ Library Set up across the country: The Contest for a Cause 2014 (C4C) prize money will be utilized to set up libraries in various schools. So will be busy setting it up in March or by June. You can get to know about about C4C here.
Apart from the above mentioned initiatives, our core team is also piloting 5 new initiatives. Based on its success, we will be doing them in a bigger scale in later part of 2015.
I would also be visiting different places to address students and meet new volunteers. You can see my calendar here and be part of such volunteering meets when I come to your city :).
So, the planned agenda looks very packed and busier than my corporate life :).
I don't know where this journey will take me. I don't even know whether my decisions are right or wrong. I just felt that it is the right thing to do in life and went ahead with my decision.
I want to live. Not just exist. I know this life is shorter!
I know that there will be a lot of good days and much more bad days in this journey. I may end up impacting many lives or may become a disappointment.
I'm not worried about success or failure. I'm happy that I tried. I'm happy that I'm trying to make this world a better place than what it is now.
When the time comes for me to leave this world, I will feel happy as a person who went ahead and gave it a try. I might have reached the destination I want or would have been very far away from it. What ever it is, I won't regret about it.
The journey is beautiful and it is worth living for.
This journey is not possible without all of you. It is a journey of 'WE' and not 'I'. Be part of this journey and keep supporting. Let's make a difference by Volunteering!
Volunteer atleast once a month (12/365).
Note:
1) You can hear my updates through my FB page - www.facebook.com/kartheevidya
2) You can get my personal updates via Whatsapp also - Type 'Update Me' and whatsapp to '+91 8939912365'. You will be added to my whatsapp broadcast list and will be getting 2 or 3 messages per week. Your mobile number will be confidential and will not be exposed to others like it happens in typical Whatsapp groups. You will getting individual messages from me.