Mumbai: In a quiet corner of Mumbai Metro’s Western Express Highway station on Friday afternoon, a bunch of children seated in orderly rows fidgeted and talked among themselves as they were introduced to one Indian classical musician after another. “Hariprasad Chaurasia. You know who he is?” the moderator asked, drawing a blank. The impatience was beginning to show. The moderator pointed to a boy in the front row and said, “Pay attention, or I’ll call you to the table here.” The method was familiar, but this was no school in transit. It was part of a week-long session on music and theatre for underprivileged children being organised by the Mumbai Metro in collaboration with Natural Streets for Performing Arts. It was one among the scores of events across the city that marked Daan Utsav, the week-long festival which celebrates the joy of giving.
The festival is incredible in scale and reached out to crores of people across the country. In Mumbai, a core volunteer base of five worked quietly, persuading NGOs and companies to participate. They are not part of any formal organisation, and do not get paid. Some of them started work in December last year, making time from classes or day jobs.
As the week progressed, one thing became quite clear: Mumbai is a giving city.
“In terms of sheer engagement, we achieved what we set out to do,” said Vikas Puthran, VP, Corporate Alliances and Operations, GiveIndia. The organisation roped in seven NGOs at four metro stations — Ghatkopar, Chakala, Saki Naka and Andheri — to convey the message of what the NGO does, create visibility and collect donations. The theme was, ‘I am a celebrity. I changed Mumbai.’ “We don’t have a historical comparison, as this was the first time we were doing something like this on the Metro,” said Puthran. “But in each station, we easily had 50 to 100 donors at every NGO counter.” To him, the most heartening example came from Chakala, where a donor, on impulse, treated the children of the Salaam Baalak Trust and the volunteers at the counter to ice cream.
An official at Mumbai Metro, who did not wish to be named, said the event helped the organisation realise what they could do with a public space. “Transport doesn’t just mean going from one place to another. The way we see public spaces, is that these are where people spend a considerable amount of time and we want them to be happy places,” she said. The overall objective is to enrich people’s lives in the time they commute, besides reaching out to the overall community. “By doing so, we want to set an example.”
The Metro-related events were an unexpected success. “We thought we would get more footfalls at Phoenix Mall,” said Puthran, “but the Metro proved better in terms of visibility. Not only did people stop to ask questions, it also opened up the possibility of them coming back the next day or later in the evening to donate.”
Volunteers of Robin Hood Army, an organisation committed to seeing that no one goes hungry on the streets of Mumbai, were as amazed at the spontaneous giving. They started a public collection drive for necessities and educational supplies for 2,000 children across the city. “We covered all areas of the city up to Virar, Thane and Navi Mumbai. The response was amazing as there was an overflow at our collection centres,” said Amit Tanvi, a volunteer for Daan Utsav, who is also part of Robin Hood Army. In some collection centres, people looked up the materials that the organisation required and bought in bulk to donate.
Let’s Feed With Love, an initiative by three groups — Expresso Talks, Feed Your Neighbour and Youth For Seva — focused on crowdsourcing dry rations to distribute among families in villages beyond Aarey Colony and Mokhada, a village on the route to Lonavla with a very high incidence of childhood malnutrition. “We had set up five collection centres in the city and the response was overwhelming,” said volunteer Shalini Kocha. “Besides materials like rice and pulses we also collected things like peanuts and milk powder. All of these were made into food packs and on Friday, one of our teams went to Mokhada to distribute them. There are 400 adults in that village and about 50 children.” Today, the team will be going to villages beyond Aarey Colony, where another 150 packs of food will be distributed. The collection drive was so successful, she says, that the team decided to add on brick-worker families in Kalyan, tying up with an organisation that works with them.
Daan Utsav wasn’t just about donations. Part of the agenda was getting people to volunteer their time for causes.
Bhumi Volunteers, for instance, decided to try and get residents of Juhu to help clean up the beach. “We started out with about 90 volunteers but the group rapidly expanded as people saw what we were doing. Even people who were passing by asked us to give them gloves and bags so they could help us,” said Satheesh Ravi, one of the coordinators.
As Daan Utsav draws to a close (the festival ends today) the organising team is quite pleased with the results. As one of them put it, it’s about multiple messaging and creating opportunities to give. “When you actively give, it changes you. It makes you happy. We also believe there’s good in everybody. That needs to be given an opportunity.”
