Karma Archives - Page 4 of 4

February 29, 2016 By Ruta Satam 2 Comments

From Soul to Sole

Just as clothes are important to cover oneself, Shoes is also important to cover your feet from the hard ground. Lack of a shoe in your feet can cause a lot of wear and tear in the foot tendons, ligaments as well as bones. Additionally, hookworms, a leading cause of disease in developing countries, enter the body through the foot, usually when a person steps in infected dirt. The use of shoes is the best way to prevent infection by hookworms.

Sadly, today a lot of people and children alike from the background walk barefoot, not by choice, but because they cannot afford a pair of shoes or slippers. And then there is this affluent class or fairly privileged class of people who have several pairs of shoes and seldom know what to do with the extra pair that has got old and lying in the corner.

Understanding this disparity and the importance of footwear for one and all, two young lads from Mumbai Shreyans Bhandari and Ramesh Dhami started Green Sole, a social venture that collects discarded shoes, refurbishes them and makes comfortable footwear for the underprivileged.

The idea is to provide these shoes to the neediest through corporate, NGOs and schools. The seeds of this idea was sowed when Shreyans and Ramesh started running for fitness and ran hundreds of kilo meters every year participating in various Marathons. And through their runs they also lost three to four pairs of sport shoes each year.

They found that the soles were in good condition but, the shoe sides tore within months. The duo wondered if they could find some use for the intact soles of these quality sport shoes. Research led them to the idea of recycling and refurbishing them into trendy slippers. That brainwave eventually spawned an eco-friendly enterprise that reuses shoe soles and is appropriately named “Greensole”.

So far Greesole has distributed over 3000 footwear in Kondana village, Maharashtra and to homeless in Mumbai. There are several corporate entities who are joining this initiative of collecting old shoes and donating them to Greensole.

GOQii haspart of their Karma initiative has partnered with Greensole to provide its users a platform where they can donate their footwear or contribute their karma points towards those individuals who are deprived of a footwear. The idea is walk more to get healthy.

GOQii and Greensole will also be hosting on-ground workshops for GOQii users and provide all those interested an opportunity to lend their hands to make shoes for the under-privileged.

To know more about Greensole, please visit their website http://www.greensole.in/

Reference:

February 15, 2016 By Anusha Subramanian 1 Comment

Bring a Smile On Their Face! Support Kids With Cancer

Cancer is a cruel and expensive disease. It drains you physically and exhausts you financially. And for the thousands of families who travel to Mumbai for treatment, one of the most challenging hurdles is to find a cheap and safe place to stay while the patient is being treated. Which is why Access Life is like an answer to a prayer.

Access Life, started by two young professionals Ankeet Dave and Girish Nair provides provides a loving and temporary home for the parent or care taker and the child undergoing the treatment for cancer at Tata Memorial Hospital and Wadia hospital in Mumbai. Their mission is to offer a home-like environment for these families and also try to improve the quality of life of these children by providing practical support services, educational resources and recreational programs.

Currently, the shelter in Chembur houses 8 kids who have come from Kolkata, Orissa and Maharashtra. The children are as young as 1 year to 5 years.

The children stay till the time they are undergoing treatment. Access Life provides for accommodation and food at absolutely no cost to the parents, all that is needed is a letter from the doctor treating the patient. It’s not just free accommodation and food, Access Life also organizes events for the kids and calls for volunteers who can just come and spend time with the kids at the home.

GOQii employees as part of the Friday activities coupled with the Karma initiative organized one such event at Access Life’s home where in few employees spent their Friday evening with the kids. There was music, dance and games and a complete fun filled evening.

All that Access Life asks for is to come and spend time with the kids. The stigma attached to Cancer still looms large over those affected by Cancer. Awareness and education about Cancer is very low in India. It is considered a contagious disease that can spread by touching or even speaking to the patient. Access Life strives to break this myth by inviting one and all to come forward and brighten the lives of these little angels by spending time with them. You could just give an hour a week if not every day. Believe me you will not regret it.

If you want to know more and also would like to spend some time with the kids visit www.accesslife.org

November 17, 2015 By Ruta Satam Leave a Comment

Giving keeps you healthy

Giving has always proved to be good for health.. Giving to others has been shown to increase health benefits in people with chronic illness, including cancer and multiple sclerosis. One good deed a day is all it takes to be healthy both physically and mentally apart from all the exercises that you do. The one reason giving may improve physical health and longevity is that it helps decrease stress, which is associated with a variety of health problems. Giving to others gives an inner happiness to one.

The opportunity to do Karma or good to others awaits all of us. There is an opportunity for us as an individual 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 have the opportunity to participate and do ‘Karma’(Doing good to others). 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.”

We kick start with our Karma Blogs from this auspicious Diwali week. GOQii’s Karma Specialist Ruta will enlighten us regularly on the various Karma topics and Karma deeds. We kick start with the issue of Child Labour and how Education is every Child’s right.

Burn all evils and embrace the Good

The festival of Lights has just passed and its been a good one week of celebrations with our families and friends. Festive season has just begun and will continue till the end of the year. It’s that time of the month when we cannot enough of all the shopping both for ourselves, our loved ones and for our home. As children, we all have fond memories of these festival celebrations be it Dusshera, Diwali or Christmas with our families.

It’s not enough to just think about our own kids and their well being. Sadly, like our children there are so many poor kids on the street all by themselves with no one to look after them and who have no idea what festivities are or what a festival like Diwali or Christmas feels like. These lesser privileged kids live their life each day as it comes.

Many of them are forced into begging and if it is not begging then they are forced into child labour. You might not realize but, there could be many new things in your house which might have been made by these tiny hands. The new Saree that you are wearing, the lantern that is lighting your home might just be some of the things that these children have lent their hands to.

It is not a good feeling when you see a child slogging to earn some few bucks instead of going to school and gaining some knowledge. Every child has the right to education. School ideally is the right place for them and not traffic signals and restaurants.

According to the World Labor report by International Labor Organization (ILO) child labor is considered as ‘forced labor’ because children are rarely in the position to give free consent to any activities performed by them as most aspect of their lives are determined by adults.

Official figures shared by ILO in its ‘World report on Child Labour 2015’ indicates some 168 million children remain trapped in Child Labor while at the same time there are 75 million young person aged 15 to 24 years of age are unemployed.
The largest numbers of children are employed in places like textile factories, dhabas (roadside restaurants) and hotels, or as domestic workers.

It’s a vicious circle:

The day when a child is employed it is the very day when the young mind is denied access to education which is actually his or her right. Lack of education leads to lack of opportunity which finally leads to poverty and also other bad habits.
Child labor exists because there is a demand! Child Labor continues to be a concern in this day and age but because of the efforts of labor groups, governments, companies and ordinary people like you and me, the number of companies employing child labor is going down.

Simple steps that you could take to eradicate child labor:

BE’ a responsible citizen and ensure you do not employ child labor. Even if it means to employ as a house help to take care of your child
As a consumer, you can make sure that the products you’re buying do not employ child labor.
ACT’ as a responsible citizen and make responsible choices. Ensure that your society does not employ child labor.
‘EDUCATE’ and create awareness amongst people employing child laborers and the parents sending their children to work.
Further, ‘REPORT’ cases of child labor.

So festivities or no festivities let us do our bit! Let us consciously try and help the deprived children and give them what they really deserve. There are many organizations that work for the welfare and betterment of children. Instead of burning your cash on crackers why not you could probably think of sponsoring one child’s education.