WE CAN....DO WE??

It was last week when we got a mail from our manager stating that we have received this quarter's team budget. As soon as we get this mail like every time a buzz of deciding what to do with the funds flows in the team...thats the only point of discussion until we decide on something, like last time we got a useless trolly-laptop bag and we went for a team lunch at Barbeque Nation. This time somebody wants to got for 3 lunches (at decent restaurants and that too Indian), I don't understand why people don't want to experiment with new cuisines/places. Anyways back to the options some what voucher to spend on their own but thats not possible as the whole purpose of the budget is to developing team bonding and it has to be spend in some team building activity....which is nothing but only going out for team lunch....pathetic. team building activity, people are not ready to stay back in the evening as they have to reach home, people cant come on Saturdays as they have other plans and we cant go out of office of this thing for a longer period of time as client wont be very happy about it...so what to do???

Three weeks back I read a blog from PN, who is involved with some NGO in Singapore. That inspired me to devote my free time for some social cause. I think thats one of the ways we cant give back something to the society. I was associated with SPARK (Some People Are Really Keen) in my collage days...I will talk about SPARK some other day. But I thought of getting involved with some kind of activity other then my daily routine life. While looking for some NGO, I found WCHSH - WELFARE CENTRE FOR HEARING AND SPEECH HANDICAPPED.

Today I thought of going to their establishment and meet the director, Mr M C Jain. I called their office in the morning and took an appointment to meet him. He is a very soft spoken man in his fifties, associated with the NGO for last 27 years now. WCHSH is situated in Sector 15 of Gurgaon (very near to 32nd Milestone), with a campus of 15 acres. They are primarily involved in providing education/vocational training to people who are hearing and speech handicapped. They have a staff of 35 people providing services to around 200 children from 5 to 18 years of age, out of which 100 are day scholars and 100 are hostelers.

While discussing their activities and how I can get involved with them I realised that instead of spending money in 2-3 team lunches or going of bowling/ go-carting we can spend a part of the funds available to us for a good cause. I know there must be some people in the team who definitely will be doing their part of social duties but as Team as well we can contribute something. Mr Jain gave me his ideas how we can make some difference to children's lives. We can either get some stuff for them or organise a breakfast/lunch for them. We can also support them in terms of improving their infrastructure and so on. Every team in our organisation gets their quarterly budget which they spend in useless activities / buying. Lets from this quarter onwards use the funds for some good cause as well.

I will initiate this proposal to the team lets see kya result aata hai. I will keep all of you posted about this...lets see how highly educated and high earning Indian youth working in an MNC takes my proposal!!!! I think WE CAN make a difference by contributing something from our side but DO WE do it??