Every year, I sit down to write about Rippan Kapur on his birthday. I know if he could reach me he would yell at me to stop wasting time and get on with what I have to do. He hated talking about himself or being praised, to the point that he would never let people know that he started CRY (Child Relief and You as it was then, Child Rights and You now), always referring to a nebulous ‘they’ as founders.
But he died, way too young, in 1994, and cannot reach me, so I can write my little note. I believe his is a story that must be shouted from the rooftops.
Thirty-nine years ago, when Rippan was 25 and an airline purser, he collected ₹7 each from six friends and put in ₹8 himself, to make the ₹50 he needed to start an NGO called CRY. The ‘office’ was his family home: the dining table was for meetings, and the space under it was used to store greeting cards that were the initial source of revenue.
Rippan believed that people who could make a difference existed; they simply needed to be asked. Rippan taught us how to ask for money and receive it with grace, boldness and conviction.
To put this in context, remember that in 1979, there was no liberalisation; there were few multinationals and not many billionaires. ‘Social work’ was done by activists in the field, and affluent men and women in cities ‘gave to charity.’ The norm in the social sector was to look at everything from the lens of ‘but India is a poor country.’ Child labour, for example, was accepted as a necessary evil that helped poor families survive. Concepts like social entrepreneurship, philanthropy and impact investing were unknown.
Nothing at all
Into that world came Rippan — no connections, no wealth, not even a freedom struggle background, a regular middle-class guy, with a regular middle-class job but with an unshakeable conviction that Indian children were India’s responsibility. He was about to set up an organisation that would seek to engage every citizen in the struggle for justice for children. Here was a group of people who talked of large-scale impact, of funding individuals and groups that would work all over India.
CRY not only survived Rippan’s premature death, it grew and changed. In 1989, CRY’s mission and values also struck a chord with top-notch professionals, who gave up jobs to take home salaries of ₹2,000 to ₹3,500 a month.
Today, the development sector in India and abroad is full of people who grew up in what I like to call the CRY School of Social Work and Management. People who discovered their calling in CRY and have gone on to do seminal work across the globe with their own initiatives for change.
Shantha Sinha, who pioneered work in eradicating child labour in Andhra Pradesh, came to Rippan after every funding door had closed. She got a ‘yes’ and an immediate cheque for the funds she needed to start her work which, today, has been replicated globally.
Andal Damodaran of the Indian Council for Child Welfare in Chennai, Gloria D’Souza, who founded Parisar Asha in Mumbai, Zakiya and John Kurrien of The Centre for Learning Resources in Pune, innovators in transforming education for children from adverse backgrounds — all of them were similarly supported.
Rippan’s approach was simple: “What I can do, I must do.” His allegiance clear: “CRY is my home, family and life.” His heart belonged to children. Just an hour or so before he died, when one of his oldest and dearest colleagues asked him how he was feeling, he said, “I can see the faces of smiling children outside my window.”
I cannot think of a better way to leave the planet.
The writer is a former CEO of CRY.
