BANGALORE, INDIA – It’s 5:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, and four children are at a center to receive free blood transfusions in Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka state. The three boys and one girl have thalassemia, a group of inherited blood disorders.
Three of the children are asleep at the spacious center after receiving tests mandatory for the transfusion earlier in the day. They are woken up to receive the blood they need.
Needles pierce their hands, but their faces glow with radiant smiles and twinkling eyes. They shake visitors’ hands with much affection.
Two of the boys are brothers from Bangalore, Kumar Geeta, 8, and Anand Geeta, 4. Their mother, N.G. Geeta, 28, says that both have thalassemia and need frequent blood transfusions.
Akshata Hajeri, the counselor at the center and its lone full-time volunteer, opens reports showing that Kumar has had 66 transfusions at the center, and Anand has had 27.
Kumar and Anand’s father is a rickshaw driver, and paying for blood transfusions for the two children would be expensive for the family. Geeta says that she is very satisfied with the care provided to her children at the center.
Parvathamma, 11, is the lone girl patient at the center today. Her mother, Mahadevamma, who declined to give their last name, says they came to Bangalore just to receive care.
“We come from very remote place, and there, no doctors knew much about this disease,” she says of her daughter’s blood disorder. “So I went to other hospital in Tamil Nadu. There I got information about this free day care center.”
She says it would be difficult for the family to afford treatment otherwise. Her husband is a coolie, a low-wage laborer.
“We get free blood transfusion,” she says. “We do not need to pay money or give replacement of the amount of blood given to my daughter.”
The hospital where the center is located collects only 10 rupees (20 cents) from the patients as a registration fee, Hajeri says.
The center was created by Sankalp India Foundation, a youth organization through which volunteers work for the social and national welfare of their fellow Indians. Thirty young professionals and college students run Sankalp, which means “determination, thought and aim” in Sanskrit, says Rakesh Dhanya, a volunteer.
He says the organization emerged when a group of students watched a patient die because of an inability to receive blood.
“Sankalp was founded by a bunch of engineering college students in 2003,” he says. “The engineering college was next to a hospital. One night when they were having tea at a tea stall outside their college, they saw poor family members of a dying patient begging for blood on the streets.”
He says this sight broke the students’ hearts, motivating them to exhaust their contacts to obtain the blood required for the dying patient.
“However, the patient died before the blood was arranged,” he says. “From that moment on, those dedicated and compassionate group of individuals decided that in future they will do their best to ensure that not a single person dies due to the shortage of blood.”
Dhanya says that doctors usually detect thalassemia within five years of birth. Most of the patients at Sankalp’s center are children, with 80 to 100 children receiving free blood transfusions there each month and six to eight patients visiting for care per day. But he says the center also receives a few adult patients who have been fortunate to live for that long with thalassemia.
He says that there are other hospitals in Bangalore that treat children with thalassemia, but Sankalp decided to set up the center at the Indira Gandhi Institute for Child Health, a government hospital, because it caters to the underserved.
“There, thalassemia children come mainly from lower-economic families and rural Karnataka,” he says.
The hospital provides the medical care at the center, and a technology company called Applied Materials contributes the funding. Hajeri coordinates the treatment for Sankalp.
“Our counselor at this center checks the current treatment given to the children, plans for their next tests and therapy sessions and counsels the child’s parents on necessary care and informs them of the genetic nature of the disease, which is an important fact to be known if they intend to have more children,” Dhanya says.
Hajeri, who has her master’s degree in technology, says the center provides the transfusions for free, and the patients’ parents don’t need to replace the blood.
“I ensure that the patients get timely treatment,” she says. “For example, I [call] up the parents before it is time for their child’s blood transfusion. I fix the appointments. I call the doctors if the child develops some allergies due to the medication. I fix the appointments for various patients to receive transfusion.”
She has declined salaried jobs to do this volunteer work.
“I like to work here,” she says, smiling radiantly. “It makes me happy.”
Her statement is in line with the founding members’ mission: “We don’t work for name, fame or money. We work for our soul.”
Although India has various well-known and well-established nongovernmental organizations, there are also smaller initiatives through which people are making a difference. Some are self-funded, and members use money from their own pockets to help them run. Some don’t even have their own offices, and members didn’t study the issues they address in school. But what they all do have is a passion to serve citizens and animals in need. Various corporations have also gotten involved to provide funding to these organizations through corporate social responsibility programs, while other NGOs have arisen to link the two.
If certain changes are made, it is possible for India to achieve most of the Millennium Development Goals, a U.N. anti-poverty initiative of eight targets that countries around the world have pledged to achieve by 2015, according to the MDG Monitor.
There are 480,000 NGOs in India, according to the government, and many more that are not registered with the government.
Dhanya says that Sankalp’s reach has expanded in recent years from its original mission of providing free blood transfusions to patients in need.
“We have done disaster relief efforts during tsunami, the Kashmir earthquake and the floods in Tamil Nadu, the floods in North Karnataka, the Sikkim earthquake, amongst several others,” he says.
He says members of the organization operate under “code red” during emergencies to provide their full attention to relief work.
“Some of us take leave from college and offices and rush to the site of disaster by bus, train or flight as soon as we can, all on our own expense,” he says. “These people on field work get assistance from other team members at the base.”
He says the foundation also receives financial assistance for various projects from companies such as the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation, a government transportation agency.
“Our day-to-day work is self-funded,” he says. “However, we receive help from other organizations during the various events.”
Dhanya says that the support for and success of the organization has been strong, but there are still challenges. He says that Sankalp’s two main challenges are recruiting more blood donors and adhering to high safety standards.
“Blood donation is a voluntary activity, and the percentage of blood donors in India is comparatively less,” Dhanya says. “Thus, we organize various awareness programs on blood donation so that more and more people donate blood. This will ensure that blood banks have enough blood supply.”
Dhanya says Sankalp organizes events to promote blood donation nearly every week, with a special focus on raising awareness among youth. He estimates that there are about 1 million to 1.2 million youth ages 15 to 18 to 15 in Karnataka state.
“We feel this is a right age to feel responsible and thus organize awareness programs through motivational camps in schools, colleges and organizations,” he says.
He says that the other challenge is adhering to strict blood bank standards to ensure the safety of the donors.
“In the past, we broke ties with a few institutes when we found that they were not complying with the safety standards,” he says.
He says that in the future, Sankalp plans on expanding its initiatives throughout the state.
“Sankalp is located in Bangalore,” he says. “But we work across Karnataka. We organize events all across Karnataka. Our helpline caters to all the 29 districts of Karnataka.”
Iksha Foundation, a public charitable trust started in 2010, also helps children in India. Iksha supports children with eye cancer from poor and underprivileged families. Retinoblastoma is an eye cancer that kills more than 7,000 children every year, according to Iksha, named after the Sanskrit word for “sight.”
Aravind Seshadri, treasurer of the Iksha Foundation, says that these deaths are preventable.
“At Iksha, we believe that no child should ever lose eyesight or face death to this type of childhood cancer that has one of the best cure rates,” Seshadri says. “No family should have to go through the unspeakable pain of losing a child.”
He says that the eight founding members of Iksha Foundation are not doctors, but rather are full-time professionals in various careers who have a passion for saving lives. He says that many families can’t afford treatment of this childhood eye cancer.
“On average, the cost of treatment for retinoblastoma is 1 lakh rupees,” he says, which is the equivalent of $1,940. “Financial poor parents who are farmers, bus or truck drivers can’t afford such an expensive treatment for their affected children.”
He says that timely treatment is crucial to the children’s survival.
“If the affected eye is not treated, then it spreads to the other eyes and further leads to the child’s death,” he says. “Affected children need treatment to cure the eye, or in some cases they need a false eye. They need to undergo multiple chemotherapy sessions, multiple lab tests to check if the tumor is eradicated.”
Seshadri says that one of the major challenges the foundation faces is getting parents and their families who live in rural areas to come to big cities where treatment is available because many can’t afford to pay even for the bus fare. The other challenge is to spread awareness among parents and mothers especially, who tend to be the primary caretakers, about how to check their children’s eyes for symptoms in order to promote early treatment.
“Our major plan for 2012 is to spread awareness about retinoblastoma,” he says. “We inten[d] to talk to more people, more bus and truck drivers for free eye test of their children. Probably more people will be willing to come for the test when they know that the treatment is free. We wish to fund more kids and spread awareness and save the lives of as many children as possible.”
Seshadri says the foundation receives support from various corporations under their corporate social responsibility programs. In the future, he hopes that more research will be done on retinoblastoma.
“There should also be funding towards research activities, which will lead to the invention of vaccine for retinoblastoma, just like there is a vaccine for polio,” he says.
Vanamitra is an NGO that focuses on wildlife conservation in Karnataka state. Jaishankar V, who doesn’t have a last name, is one of the three young wildlife conservationists who founded Vanamitra. He says that people tend to overlook animals in their economic endeavors, such as land development.
“People have started occupying the forest, and then they complain that the wild animals have occupied their [farms],” he says. “People are using up the forest without rehabilitating the original inhabitants of the forest.”
For example, he says that developers who converted 2,000 acres of forest in Karnataka into sugarcane fields last year didn’t properly relocate the leopards that had been living there.
“People shifted few leopard cubs while their mother had gone in search of food,” he says. “The cubs very so young that they hadn’t even opened their eyes. And if the cubs were not reunited with their mother, then their survival chances would reduce.”
Jaishankar and his team conducted operations for many days until they finally reunited the cubs with their mother and saved their lives.
Jaishankar says that sometimes his organization faces opposition from local residents. For example, he says that once they rescued parakeets from astrologers who opposed their efforts.
“The [parakeets] were trapped in cages and trained to pick cards from a pack, which had predictions for the seeker,” he says. “However, the [parakeets] were kept in very bad conditions and poorly [fed].”
He says his team kept the rescued parakeets in a rehabilitation center. But 40 to 60 people, including the astrologers, marched to the center and argued for the return of the birds to their owners.
“However, we did not succumb and shifted the [parakeets] to different rehabilitation center,” he says.
He says he doesn’t let opposition deter him from his mission of helping wildlife.
“My work is full of threats, but my work is my passion,” he says.
He says that this month, he and his team rescued nine lizards from poachers. The poachers had captured the lizards from the forest in order to sell them at a meat shop.
“I and my team posed as buyers and then caught them and then released the lizards back in the forest,” he says. “We also rescued two peacocks, which were kept in a very small cage in a temple. Even these peacocks have [been] released in the forest.”
Jaishankar says that he and his team have educated almost 16,000 people in a year and a half through training and awareness programs they offer in schools, police departments, forest departments, fire departments and other organizations.
“We have recently trained 100 guards from Tamil Nadu forest department,” he says.
“Our snake awareness programs are a much-sought-after program amongst apartment dwellers, residents, societies, etc.,” he says. “Our nature camps in jungles for students and adults are a hit amongst the participants.”
While organizations and foundations such as Vanamitra, Iksha and Sankalp work directly in the field, there are also socially conscious companies that fund them under their corporate social responsibility programs. There are also NGOs that help to connect the two based on needs and focus areas.
One such NGO is Bangalore Cares. Staff member Meena Dave says that it was created because there were hardly any NGOs to help other NGOs.
“Our main activities are like information sharing through our website, bridging the gap between NGOs and corporate, helping NGOs function better by assisting them in communication, raising funds, in their management strategy and budgeting,” she says.
She says that companies approach Bangalore Cares to find NGOs to support in their corporate social responsibility programs as well as to organize charitable events for during the Diwali festival, Christmas and other special occasions.
“Companies who wish to connect with the NGOs and their work approach us for suggestions and after studying their needs, we give them relevant options,” she says. “However, we do not influence them to choose.”
She says that through various partnerships, Bangalore Cares helps generate funding for many NGOs.
“Our partnership with World 10K Bangalore marathon for the past four years has helped us raise rupees 5 crore for almost 100 NGOs,” Dave says, which is the equivalent of $970,000.
Still, she says funding is a challenge.
“Funding is a problem,” she says. “Basic information requested by the NGOs and corporate are free. However, we also face challenge of finding people to do the researcher work. People like to contribute more toward the events.”
Dave says the organization plans to work with smaller groups in the future.
“In 2012, we plan to work with smaller NGOs run by few people and also take up cases based on one-on-one basis,” she says.
Jaishankar says he hopes Vanamitra can receive external funding in the future this way. He says that the wildlife conservation group has been listed with Bangalore Cares for almost three years now, but no company has chosen to invest in it. He says people think that wildlife is not essential.
“People want to fund children education and women empowerment, but they do not want to help preserve wildlife,” he says.
