Nxg

INITIATIVE Diya, a part-time NGO, is making a full-time impact on the lives of many through its activities.

PAROMITA PAIN

The ‘Diya’ story started in 2004-05 with a bunch of fresh-out-of-college, just-into-a-job youngsters who believed in positive action to bring about some sort of social change. “Being small in size and low on experience, we had no illusions about our ability to bring about such changes — we were fully aware of our limitations and were quite willing to work within them to achieve what little we could,” says founding member Sriram Prabhu.

Thus, Diya didn’t have a grand vision but rather chose to focus on bringing about incremental change within the sections of society that its members interacted with regularly like their work with the tuition centre in Pozhichalur, near Pallavaram. Local representatives, who had been running the centre for many years, appealed to Diya when their efforts hit a roadblock. Diya volunteers stepped in to conduct classes and extra-curricular sessions for the kids on weekends. Today, they are working towards a complete renovation of the centre which will be ready in time to welcome the kids back for the next academic year.

“Our choices of projects were guided by the knowledge and network of our members to directly identify issues that needed support. Accordingly we made forays into fields like primary education and environmental awareness, letting ourselves be guided by whatever seemed important to be taken up at that stage. We have always believed in employing our resources in taking up projects that would have a definitive, tangible and sustainable impact,” says Sriram.

The core team includes Srinivas Venugopal the President, Aparna Chandrasekaran the Secretary, Vijay Ramachandran the Treasurer, Sriram Prabhu, Deepa Balasubramanian, Indiresh Sankararaman, Raghavan Raghunathan and Deepak Venkatesan. All the members and most of the volunteers are the age group of 23-26.

Diya also has a sizeable volunteer network based in Chennai that leverages its activities. But some members also live and work in places like Bangalore, Mumbai and Gujarat and monetary contributions come in from those places as well. Contributions are very important and the Life Star Blind Women’s Training School, Choolaimedu, will vouch for that. Diya helped launch the Life Star Programme to impart vocational training to its students.

“Since its inception, Diya has remained a ‘part-time’ organisation – all of us have full-time professions which keep us busy through the week, so we devote the weekends entirely to Diya. Most of us are employed with software, engineering design or consultancy firms except for Srinivas who works with a rural education group at IIT Madras,” says Srinivas Venugopal. The last three-and-a-half years have seen Diya evolve from an informal group doing charity work to a registered organisation with a clear focus on education and empowerment.

“This evolution in some ways also mirrors the gradual development in the outlook of the core group running the operations. There still isn’t a grand design as we don’t see the need to have one and be burdened by it. All we have is a strong commitment to making optimal use of our resources in creating a positive impact,” says Sriram.

To know more about Diya contact:

Srinivas – 98403 38546 / srinivas@diya.org.in

Sriram – 98409 81660 / sriram@diya.org.inOr log on to http://diya.org.in

Popularity: 11% [?]