Ipseba, a 12-year-old, who lives in the Greater Love Children’s Home, dreams of becoming an Indian Administrative Service officer so she can help others. In her spare time, she coaches other children in English and Mathematics. It is to fulfill the dreams of children like her that a group of students have started ‘The Page Inc’ to help orphanages and smaller non-profit organisations manage their social media presence.
“While the bigger orphanages in the city have a lot of patronage, and people come forward to help, the smaller ones need help too,” one of the project’s heads, Roma Saravanan said. “We are all tech-savvy, and want to give back something to society,” Roma added.
The team of 30 Class XI commerce students from Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Anna Nagar, have been working on the Greater Love Children’s Home’s Facebook page and soon plan to start a Twitter account too.
After two months, the orphanage’s page has close to 200 ‘likes’, and has received enquiries on how to approach them. According to Salomi Vedanayagam, one of the founders of the orphanage, most smaller homes are in dire need of donations.
“On special occasions, our children get sponsors for feasts, and a few people give clothes, but we are looking to encourage holistic development for our children, which needs constant support from others,” she said.
She added that they were hoping the Facebook page would help encourage outsiders to visit and help out.
A new model
For the students who run Page Inc, however, the challenge is different.
“We are currently charging the orphanages around Rs. 2,000 a month, but we want to change our model so we have sponsors for Facebook pages of non-profit organisations,” another team head Abhyuday Ganesh Raja said. He added that they were looking at small eateries and local businesses to sponsor these pages, which would provide advertising for the businesses as well.
With the proceeds of the project, the students who are part of Page Inc took the children from the orphanage out for burgers recently.
They also donated around 200 notebook, pencil and eraser sets to mentally challenged children, and planted 200 saplings in their school. The project was started as part of the School Enterprise Challenge.
