Karma Archives

October 2, 2019 By GOQii Leave a Comment

Make a Difference with GOQii Karma

We often think of karma as an intangible entity, something that we can’t touch or predict. There’s a fair chance that our notions of karma might not be true at all but that doesn’t negate the fact that doing good creates personal happiness and paves the way for gratitude.

It has been scientifically proven that the selfless act of giving creates happiness and promotes overall wellbeing. The opportunity to do good is a quality present in all of us. Humans by nature are altruistic beings. It is in our nature to help. All we must do is recognize that part of us and walk together for the greater good. That’s what GOQii Karma is all about! A tangible way to see the impact you make on the world by being healthy.

How does it Work?

Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s iconic Dandi March of 390km, for every 390 steps you clock while using GOQii, you are awarded 1 Karma Point. Once you accumulate sufficient GOQii Karma Points, you can choose to donate these points to social causes listed in the GOQii App’s karma section. The points you donate are converted into monetary contributions by our Karma Partners and our Karma Partners help the underprivileged via these causes.

What Has GOQii Karma Achieved?

Since 2015, with the Karma Points donated by our players to our Karma Partners, we have helped and enabled many individuals throughout India. Some of our key highlights include:

1. Supporting Victims Affected by the Tamil Nadu Floods: The heavy rainfall that plagued Tamil Nadu in 2015 drove thousands of people out of their homes. 5479 GOQii Players walked and contributed a total of 3.9 million Karma Points to Oxfam India to support those affected by providing them hygiene kits, non-food items, dry food ration kits, soap and chlorine tablets and hygiene promotion activities.

2. Ratna Nidhi Charitable Trust: With Ratna Nidhi Charitable Trust (RNCT) as our Karma Partners, we were able to make a difference along with RNCT to the lives of many.

Food For Education: Through this program RNCT distributed free food prepared in their kitchen to poor children attending any formal or non-formal educational class on a daily basis. The program had been very effective in arresting school drop-out rates. This cause was aided with a total of 62,55,289 Karma Points.
Disability Project: RNCT gave new life to 874 disabled people who had been deprived of their basic privileges of mobility and hearing. These persons with disability have gained their self-confidence back and are now living a normal life and have the potential to become contributing members of society. This cause was aided with 1,60,87,615 Karma Points

3. Empowering Women against Violence: Through our Karma platform we were able to aid Oxfam India in their quest to end violence against women. Through this program, Oxfam India reached out to more than 42,000 women to end violence and established 23 support centres within formal and informal locations to provide psycho-social counselling and legal aid to women facing this issue.

4. Upcycling to Slippers for Children in Need: This cause enabled the collection of old shoes and Rs. 199/pair to upcycle them to slippers and donate them to children in need. Greensole’s vision is to contribute to social good, by creating a self-sustaining infrastructure that facilitates the provision of the basic necessity of footwear to everyone. This cause was completed with 1, 30, 00,000 Karma Points donation by our players.

5. Trees for Rural Communities, Chintamani, Karnataka: Still an on-going cause, Grow-Trees.com wants to allow users to satisfy a private purpose of greeting someone through an eTreeCertificate, while doing social good by planting trees. With Grow-Trees you can plant trees with just a few clicks and gift them to celebrate festivals, birthdays, anniversaries or other special occasions using their personalized e-certificate. The cost of each tree is INR 85.

You can browse through some of the causes on the Karma section in the GOQii App. Just like this, every step you take makes a difference. So clock in your daily steps, collect and donate karma points as you never know who you might be helping.

On the day of Gandhi Jayanti, pledge to walk daily so you can help someone else get on their feet!

#BeTheForce

March 12, 2019 By Anusha Subramanian 4 Comments

Catalysing Social Change through Karma

How often do we all do Charity?

Whether it is monetary or just about helping somebody out. How often have we helped someone with their studies? When was the last time we spent time playing with underprivileged kids? We seldom do it. Unless some friend actually points to a particular cause that he or she is related to. Let’s accept the fact that Philanthropy does not come to us easily. While globalization is increasingly making us aware of all the problems faced by humanity today, we aren’t doing much to bring about social change.

Everywhere around us, there is hunger, unemployment, lack of medical facilities and education. Not much has been done to eradicate poverty from every corner of this country, extend health care, provide basic education to one and all and protect our environment. Anyone who’s studied emerging markets talks about the opportunities the BoP offers. Especially in South Asia and more importantly in India. It’s a well-known fact how 70% of the population lives in rural areas and 75.6% live on less than $2 a day.

People below the poverty line all around the world are not asking for the moon or any aspiration goods and services. They are asking for basics such as infrastructure, water, energy, education, and employment to be able to live a decent and sustainable life.

Be The Change!

There may not be one resolution to all the problems. Non-profits for decades have been working for the betterment of the lives of the people at the bottom of the pyramid. But, there is only so much they can do. There is a new breed of young social entrepreneurs (Socents) who have sprung up in the last decade or so and are doing their best to bring about a social change. For instance, GreenSole, a social venture by Shreyans Bhandari and Ramesh Dhami, collects discarded shoes, refurbishes them and makes comfortable footwear for the underprivileged. You can know more about them by visiting their website: www.greensole.in.

Step Towards a Brighter Future

Apart from NGOs and the Social entrepreneurs, the opportunity to do Karma or good to others awaits all of us. There is an opportunity for us, as individuals, to be bold and use our unique role as philanthropists to spark, and drive large-scale social change. Whether as a social entrepreneur or by supporting a social cause, each one us has the opportunity to participate and do ‘Karma’(Doing good to others). GOQii, provides the opportunity to do Karma and this can be done by being healthy, fit and earning Karma Points.

At GOQii, our philosophy has been to achieve harmony between mind, body & soul. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s journey of 390 KM, which he started today, for every 390 steps tracked through your activity tracker, you earn 1 Karma Point. These points then get converted into monetary donations by our donor partners.

With the India Steps Challenge, you’re not only walking and earning big rewards but you’re also collecting Karma Points which you can donate to a charity/cause of your choice in the GOQii app! Currently, there are two causes in the GOQii app:

1. Upcycling to Slippers for Children in Need

This cause enables the collection of old shoes and Rs. 199/pair to upcycle them to slippers and donate to children in need. Greensole’s vision is to contribute to social good, by creating a self-sustaining infrastructure that facilitates the provision of the basic necessity of footwear to everyone. Environmental good by refurbishing discarded shoes with zero carbon footprint and economic good by giving employment to refurbish shoes.

2. Trees for Rural Communities, Chintamani, Karnataka

Grow-Trees.com wants to allow users to satisfy a private purpose of greeting someone through an eTreeCertificate, while doing social good by planting trees. With Grow-Trees you can plant trees with just a few clicks and gift them to celebrate festivals, birthdays, anniversaries or other special occasions using their personalized e-certificate. The cost of each tree is INR 85.

Believe me, I can say this from my own experience, doing Karma will only help bring a positive change in your life – a change for the better.

Who knows? One day, you may look back and say, “I was there at the beginning and I made a difference!”

May 19, 2018 By Anusha Subramanian Leave a Comment

GOQii Fellow Srishti Bakshi Walks for Women Safety

Srishti pic

She walked alone 3800 km across 11 states and 230 days and covered the stretch from Kanyakumari to Jammu & Kashmir on a mission to create awareness about the safety of women in India. Srishti Bakshi, a UN women champion for change and a GOQii Fellow of 2018 undertook this mission in support of Women Empowerment. Today, May 19^th she will be doing a night walk in Mumbai and reclaim the night as a safe space for women and girls.

She story is interesting from having a good corporate job to starting her social initiative CrossBow, a movement which aims to empower women and make India a safer place for them. The story starts from when she was living with her husband in Hong Kong with a perfect job and everything was good until one day when she realized that while they were being appreciated for being from India but in the same breath she also heard people saying how unsafe India is for women. This kind of disappointed her and Srishti wanted to do something to change this mindset that India is unsafe for women.

She gave up her corporate job and started CrossBow, She prepared a whole year and underwent extensive physical training — muscle repair therapy — before she started off. She started her mission on Sep 15, 2017,, with at least 65 stops along the route where she has been conducting workshops with women on various themes including digital and financial literacy.

When asked how exhausting was it for her to be on the road walking for 230 days she says, “Apart from the logistical nightmare, the journey was mentally exhausting as I would meet at least a 100 people daily and listen to their issues and try and come up with solutions”.

Let’s join Srishti on her Mumbai Night Walk. Prior to the walk, the event starts at 5 pm at High Street Phoenix, Mumba with power-packed performances by Sofa Ashraf, Aranya Johar, Rekha Bhardwaj and the likes After which there is a public night walk from High Street Phoenix to Haji Ali. The night will end with Srishti continuing to walk up to Gateway of India.

April 3, 2017 By Ruta Satam Leave a Comment

Good Karma brings Wellbeing

Total karma points donated: 19,497,588

Total money raised: 47million rupees (Rs 4.7 Crore)

Total causes featured: 25

Good intent resulting in good deed contributes to good karma and future happiness. It has been scientifically proven that the act of giving generates personal happiness and overall wellbeing. At GOQii, the karma philosophy has been to achieve harmony between mind, body & soul.

The year 2016 has been fantastic for GOQii and for all the causes featured on its Karma platform. The causes were successfully completed and funded with GOQii players’ karma point contribution. The Donor partner converted the contributed karma points to actual money and the impact that has been created is incredible.

Below are some highlights from our NGO partners and their work that GOQii has supported:

(I) Oxfam India

Highlights:

Violence against Women: This continues to be one of the most prevalent and least recognised human rights violations in the world. One in every two women in India experience violence in their daily life.

Oxfam India under its Gender Justice theme has been addressing the issue of violence against women in 13 states of the country through various programs and campaigns.This program brings policy level changes through continuous engagement with Government through civil society and improved access for survivors of domestic violence to support services and the formal justice system.

Under this project, Oxfam India empowered 1.92 lakh men, women, boys and girls on the issues of violence against women.

37299 women also received training on various laws, schemes and acts and are leading community actions at various levels.

This program has created a positive impact in the lives of women who have been a victim of domestic violence. One such inspiring story is of Leela;

Leela, a mother of four children, from UP tolerated her husband’s anger for a long time. Until one night, he tried to strangle her. She reached out to a local NGO supported by Oxfam. Leela’s husband appeared at the NGO’s office that evening, drunk and threatened to attack her if she did not return with him. The counsellors informed the local police and he was taken to the police station for the night. A day later he came back, repentant and with the promise that he would not abuse Leela.

Leela returned home and the neighbours were asked to keep an eye on her husband and to report if any abusive behaviour was suspected. Gradually, Leela’s husband gave up drinking.

This terrible experience had convinced Leela that other women in her situation could also be helped. A week later, she was back at the centre, with another woman survivor. Since then, she has helped many women approach the centre.

Leela has also had a makeover—from an unsure woman who once believed that it was her fate to suffer, she has become a confident person who knows she can help others.

Oxfam’s Disaster relief program:

Disasters and poverty are closely linked to each other. The greater the severity and frequency of crises, the greater the humanitarian need.

Oxfam India along with other affiliates impacted about 271,874 people directly in Nepal through its various relief initiatives and helped them rebuild their lives after the earthquake. Oxfam India supported 50000 persons during South India flood response programme. 8000 households were supported with hygiene kit, Non-Food Items (NFI), and dry food.

(II) Greensole

Greensole, recycles discarded shoes to comfortable footwear, keeping those without shoes away from landfills and provide them to the neediest through corporates, NGOs and schools.

In 2016, Greensole reached a milestone of donating footwear to 50,000 people. The donation drive touched 89 rural schools.

(III) Ratna Nidhi Charitable Trust

Food Project:

RatnaNidhi Charitable trust’s Food for Education program distributed free food prepared in RNCT’s kitchens on a daily basis. The food is distributed to poor children attending any formal or non-formal educational class.

In 2016, ShehzadisRatna Nidhi Charitable Trust distributed food to 37 School touching 4500 Kids with 1 Meal every day. The programme had been very effective in arresting the drop-out rate in schools.

Disability project:

RatnaNidhi Charitable Trust’s Disability project gave a new life to 874 disabled people who had been deprived of their basic privileges of mobility and hearing. These persons with disability have gained their self-confidence back and are now living a normal life and have the potential to become contributing members of society.

One of the success stories in this project is of Shehzad is

an orphan who hasbeen raised by his paternal uncle in the slums of Govandi, Mumbai. His uncle is a daily wage worker earning just a handful. Sehzad grew up taking up the same job as his uncle after finishing his primary education.

On a doomful day, he was carrying an Oxygen cylinder which exploded, and that accident cost him both his legs. He got his initial treatment done at a local hospital at Bhiwandi and was then transferred to Sir J.J Hospital and later to All India Institute of Physical Medicines at Haji Ali.

While his treatment was on, he was introduced to RatnaNidhimedical centre where he was provided with a lighter and comfortable prosthesis. Shehzadis now very active and happy at his workplace working as a tailor, stitching his dreams together.

Educational sponsorship for victims affected during terror attacks:

This program of RatnaNidhi Charitable trust has given dependents of the terror victims a ray of hope in the form of educational sponsorship. The sponsorships are given out for a period of 5 years, wherein a minimum of Rs.5000 a year and additionally Rs.10000 to those pursuing higher education, graduation and post-graduation, was offered. The progress of the beneficiaries was tracked and monitor every six months. 93 kids were supported in 2016.

Age Group	Total number of kids
6 to 10	11
11 to 13	19
14 to 17	32
18 and above	31
Total	93

To conclude, Karmais rooted in our choices. By making better choices today we can improve our wellness karma in the future and experience a more vibrant state of health.