Report on Flood Relief activities

e Flood Relief activity was organized on 18th October 2009 at Kurnool Town.

Preparation for the Camp:

Preparations for the camp started on October 4th with a door-to-door collection of relief material along with donations at Kendriya Vihar Doyenz Township and a colony adjacent to it in Gachibowli area. We also collected relief material at neighborhoods of ForIT members. With a commendable help from close circles of each ForIT member, About 4 tonnes of rice and close to Rs. 1.5 lakh were raised. The collected rice was packed into packets of 10 kg for distribution. With the collected funds, we also procured new sarees, towels and lungis for distribution to the affected families. It took about a week and 12 volunteers to complete the task. On 17th October, we had loaded all the material into a DCM van (mini Truck).

On the Camp Day:

After little assessment we decide to distribute the relief material at Kurnool town itself. As we all known, Kurnool town was worst affected by the floods.

With guidance from district administration, we decided to distribute the material at Gani Galli locality (Ward No 23). The locality was very badly affected with sewage and water was logged in the streets even after 10 days after the flood water started receding. The people were living in such unhygienic conditions since then. Though houses were cleaned up, the streets right outside the houses was still covered by sewage and dirt.

The truck with relief material was flagged off from the Gachibowli 'X' roads at around 7am on 18^th Oct. After reaching Kurnool, we had a chance to meet local volunteer groups and we were educated about the situation there. To ensure that same family does not get the relief material twice, we went around house-to-house and distributed coupons for around 400 families. Later families use these coupons to collect the relief material. We also identified families which were well off and could help themselves and saved coupons for the needy families.

After two hours of coupon distribution, the vehicle was brought to the place and people were asked to form queues at the vehicle. Though it was very tough for people to maintain a peaceful and calm situation in such an uncomfortable place, with the help of local volunteers, we could peacefully complete the distribution.

We distributed 10kg rice, 1 towel, 1 saree and 1 lungi for each family to a member who came with the coupon. We got very good response from the local public that the camp was done with maximum satisfaction with no material being misused. The same was echoed by the local volunteers also.

 I would like to thank one and all for an invaluable helping hand that you have extended to this cause. This would have not been possible without your wonderful support.

I am attaching few pictures here, for more please visit 
http://picasaweb.google.com/kiran.india/FloodRelief_Kurnool?authkey=Gv1sRgCIfMota5q9TJugE#

        

           

Flood Relief Campaign - Urgent

Dear friends,

In last few days Floods had played havoc in the states of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Goa and Andhra Pradesh.

In Andhra Pradesh alone 400 villages and several towns in 5 Districts were affected, leaving 18, 00,000 people fleeing from their homes. 4, 00,000 people are now homeless as their homes were washed away in the flood water. Loss to the standing crops, infrastructure, and cattle is immeasurable, leaving these people in a devastating position. As we speak lakhs of people in some of the districts are asked to evacuate and some of the villages are washed-away.

In wake of this, Forum of IT Professionals(ForIT) (www.forit.in), (I am founder-member of this forum), have taken up this campaign in collecting any kind of flood relief material in terms of old clothing, food grains, blankets and monetary ways too. We have decided that we will not give this to some NGO, but, once we have considerable amount of goods, we, in-person would visit relief camps in some flood affected areas and distribute them at the earliest.

In regards to this, we have conducted a door-door campaign in Hyderabad and collected some good amount of clothes, few 100 Kgs of Rice and some funds too. But what ever we provide is not going to be sufficient to those victims.

So friends, on behalf of ForIT, I request you to donate generously towards this cause.

Please reply or call me at 09908124843 for bank acc details where you can deposit the funds.

Thanks
Kiran

Mark of a Democracy

My Right! My Vote!

Walk To Work - Campaign to promote voting

In his Gettysburg Address,
Abraham Lincoln called democracy “government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

And now is the time for the "people" to play their important role in the world's largest democracy to decide their representatives and now is the time to decide on how we want to be governed for next five years.

So are we participating in this sacred act? most of us (read it as educated professionals) are not even bothered, we find all reasons to escape this. But we stand first in complaining about all possible things ranging from improper roads, facilities until participating in candle light vigils for Mumbai terror attack victims. Why don't we consider this as a duty to perform. First comment that we hear from a person who does not vote - "arrey yaar my vote does not count among this huge number of voters". One needs to understand by exercising their vote, neither the country, nor the contestant, nor even the constituency will be benefited, Its U and only U will get the prize. The prize of a good governance, the prize of a development, the prize of a better utilization of the taxes that you pay.

In a view to spread the awareness in this regards, like minded people from my office have organized a campaign "Walk to Work", wherein we walked all the way from KBR National park in Banjara hills to Qualcomm office in Mindpspace - a distance of about 7 Km.

Five of us assembled at sharp 7 AM on April 15th, 2009 at the entrance of KBR park. The park is already full with morning joggers. We saw some other group also campaigning for the same cause and a gentleman from that group inquired about us looking at the charts with the slogans that we were carrying. He was very much thrilled with the effort that we were carrying out.

We had a great support from all the passers by on the road, there was instance where a lady stopped her car and took one of our posters. She said she was going to put it on the back of her car. Few school kids waiting for their school bus asked us what the telugu slogan meant!

Slowly, we were being joined by many of our colleagues. By the time we reached Cyber Towers, a total of 25 of our colleagues stood there holding up our banners for about 10 minutes, and then continued our walk to the office. It was around 9.30 Am by time we reached our office.

We stopped at all important junctions, and the fact that traffic was moving slow at these junctions when we stopped was satisfying! In few instances, when we were holding up the charts, I saw few people just showing their expression - "Yes, We should Vote". Some places people expressed their support by holding their "thumbs-up". It is not just the participation that was extremely commendable, but also the fact that passers by constantly encouraged us all along the route was evidence enough of the desire of many people to participate in election.

Just voting might not be the end all of our social obligation, but it sure is a responsibility that we have to carry out.

Be Responsible! Cast Your Vote!

Few Pictures from our campaign