Live well, Give well

In the morning when Renuka and Arun came over for brunch, they brought “prasad” from the Sathyanarayan puja. What a positive way of starting the 3rd year for ShikshaDaan !! And I told Renuka that for dinner we were having Sanjay and Seema over and that anytime she felt a little low, all she had to do was meet Sanjay at OM Foundation for ten minutes. The reason is, when you meet Sanjay for ten minutes, you get a dose of positive enthusiasm for a whole year :):):). Sanjay Drabu is one of the co-founders of OM Foundation school  that’s run in Hoshiarpur village, Noida. Please read more about OM Foundation here.

This year has been eventful… We have launched the ShikshaDaan Yatra, our 3 year driving Yatra to visit every district in India. There are 676 districts and we hope to visit every one of them over the next three years to identify partner institutions that can give us the beneficiaries to fund. The big hairy goal that we have taken up for ShikshaDaan of funding 1.25 crore (12.5 million) people over the next 25 years is also finding traction. Yes, the 80G exemption is still work in progress but the delivery model for ShikshaDaan is taking shape really well. 

We have funded some amazing students this year… Especially Devika, who is about to complete her B.Tech. Then Sanjay who is about to complete his 12th and hopefully join an IHM. 

During the March trip we have met some truly inspiring NGOs and some brilliant students. There is really no dearth of good work, and yes, there are huge problems to solve as well. The Tamil Nadu government thinking of ways to increase revenue from liquor sales is worrying, but in the same state the work done by the “Single Teacher School” is awesome – 20,000 students impacted !! Wow. Or Udavum Ullangal and some of the inspiring stories that Mr. Mahadevan shared. They are transforming lives and slowly as the positive becomes more, the negatives have to reduce. 

We are super excited and with clarity about our life purpose to “give”… We certainly hope to make a difference to the world. Like I said in my farewell at Aon Hewitt, we all have different levels of “enough” money. Once you have saved your “enough”, plan for that which you really want to do and go after it. Along the way, it doesn’t hurt to help one other person to move ahead in life, so “give” some. We spend all our lives, “taking” from the world and then die empty handed, why not give it all away before the d-day? It’s confirmed by all those who left before us that you can’t take the money with you so it’s no different for us :):):) – live well and give well. 

Enough gyan for today ! 

Please look out for updates on the ShikshaDaan Yatra starting April 9th and ofcourse help fund the beneficiaries we identify.