For a Change
For a Change is a project started to build compassionate communities to join the fight to end child poverty and ensure decent childhood for underprivileged children.
Impact I: Ensure decent childhood for every child
Children living in poverty experience hunger, illness, insecurity, and instability, which often result in low academic achievement, behavioral problems, and social and emotional development difficulties. We are helping a child to live in a safe world where they can have quality education, good schools, quality health care, nutritious food, generous care, access to resources, and opportunities that enable them to reach their full potential.
Impact II: Build Compassionate Communities.
The For a Change Project has inspired real action among the youth to volunteer in philanthropic activities and improve the lives of underprivileged children. We assist project participants in goal setting, insights, impact analysis, and planning philanthropic activities. In addition, we help them understand the complexities of impact assessment, ensure effective philanthropy, and be certain about whether the strategy is effective to address a particular social problem.
Project Structure
The Core Programme includes the Compassionate Communities Programme, Random Acts of Kindness Programme, and Multistakeholder Partnerships to further the project’s objectives. In addition to the core programme, we often use visual media to build awareness, bring the stories about the hardships of underprivileged children living in poverty to a larger audience and create a social impact.
Random Acts of Kindness Programme
In the Random Act of Kindness Programme, we form social volunteer groups (SVG) with young motivated individuals. We have pre-defined a range of initiatives for social volunteer groups and individuals to participate in. We have also detailed SOPs for four initiatives and named them Little Gifts, Sunday Meals, Happiness Index, and Super School for ease of identification.
Little Gifts
Underprivileged children are deprived of so many things that affording an enjoyable childhood with toys is a luxury for these children. We collect toys from previous owners and distribute them to underprivileged children living on the streets, in slums, in orphanages, and in rural villages. We are trying to bring happiness into the lives of the children by ensuring a childhood filled with toys and play. We gift the toys in mint condition to underprivileged children on their birthdays. This simple birthday toy gifting idea gives children a special toy to remember.
We run awareness building and youth engagement drives to sensitize privileged people about donating their toys and making a difference in the lives of underprivileged children. Our toy collection drives at schools and colleges attract fabulous toy donations from students. Many students start to open up and begin to understand the need of underprivileged children and volunteer to help make their lives better. In addition, we mindfully separate groups of toys to give to visually impaired, children with cerebral palsy, Autism, Down syndrome, etc. to provide them with access to toys that would lay the foundation for later development.
Sunday Meals
Every fourth Sunday of every month, we gift gourmet meals to underprivileged children under the Sunday Meals initiative. Our gourmet meals are delicious, nutritious, and selected from a unique menu we have crafted according to the taste palette of children. We often partner with good chefs, popular cafes, and restaurants to prepare our meals.
The idea of having a gourmet meal is a scarce luxury for underprivileged children as they are limited by the economic circumstances they live in. We understand that for many families living below the poverty line, their notion of adequate food is to get freedom from hunger.
During the Sunday Meals Programme, we also put effort into scanning for cases of malnutrition and other diseases among the children. We promptly allocate the maximum available resources to alleviate child hunger and improve child health through food & financial relief programs. This initiative is a small and humble effort to support the greater movement to fight hunger, and reduce malnutrition and child deaths arising out of hunger.
Super School
We have been doing community mapping to identify children from underprivileged families living in hardships and missing out on their education. We counsel the parents to end child labor and realize every child’s right to education. We help poverty-stricken families re-enroll their children back in school, and provide them with resources to support their children to thrive through education.
We have been sponsoring needed learning tools like books, stationery, and other needed school supplies like bags, and clothes, for the children who did not have minimal resources and support systems to study. We are also planning to provide scholarships to talented children from underprivileged sections of society to pursue their education. The scholarships will lessen the burden on the parents to pay for the education of the children and will give the families a sense of security and motivation to realize their child’s right to education.
Happiness Index
Birthdays, trips to parks, movies, zoos, sports, and cultural events are happy and impactful occasions. As a part of the Happiness Index Programme, we also organize special one-day activities to instill happiness and confidence among children living in the hardships of poverty. Children in the orphanages always look forward to their special day because they know that it will be filled with gifts and surprises.
We celebrate the birthdays of children living in orphanages with cake-cutting and distributing chocolates and gifts. We often combine birthday celebrations with fun activities like board games, drawing, singing, dancing, and other creative, extracurricular activities to make a positive impact on their mental health.
To understand the impact of the initiative, after each event, we record the Happiness Index of the children on a scale of 1-10, with 10 meaning extremely happy. We also share the recorded Happiness Index with the SVG’s, Patrons, and other members to relate to the success of the event.
Compassionate Communities Programme
The Compassionate Communities Programme, aims to inspire philanthropic giving to support the important causes of providing decent childhood for children. We take a citizen-centric approach to help children living in the hardships of poverty and provide a decent childhood.
“This is an important year for us, we have completed Phase I and we are planning to make record accomplishments under Phase III by 2025. Your support will help us reach our Phase II goals faster” – Arif Lemani, Founder
In-Kind Giving
In-Kind Philanthropic giving comes in many forms, one can start by offering their time & services for the greater good or one can also start a small fundraiser to raise funds from people in their known circle to help ensure decent childhood for underprivileged children.
In-kind contributions are donations of goods, services, or time—instead of cash. Tangible goods include things like food, clothing, gifts, books, and school supplies. Goods may also be intangible, such as services, usage rights, royalties, etc.
From SVGs to Donor Members
One can make an even greater impact by becoming a donor member. A donor member can make year-round
sustained monthly contribution to support the causes they believe in or one can choose to pledge a donation amount and donate in a one-time annual contribution. All Donor members will get the tax benefits of
charitable giving.
Mutually Beneficial Interactions for SVGs
We organize an open interaction between the SVGs and the project beneficiaries so that the SVGs understand the quality of impact and also understand the challenges that are met through our projects.
Representatives of SVGs can mail a formal request to the foundation expressing the desire to volunteer as an observer in project activities and as per slots, he/she can travel with selected project field teams to have a fulfilling interaction with beneficiaries under our projects.
Eat for a Cause Sale
Eat for a Cause – Bake Sale is a fundraising activity where the foundation presents high-quality food items prepared by SVGs to raise money for a cause. The idea behind the Eat for a Cause Sale is every purchase supports different social causes and acts of kindness through meaningful participation of people. It helps establish a meaningful connection with the supporters and donors.
We first select a venue, confirm availability, announce the upcoming event, stock up on ingredients, and start preparing items like handmade chocolates, baked items like cupcakes, muffins, cookies & sometimes ethnic savories. Eat for a Cause is sometimes a part of a bigger fundraising or a standalone fundraising event.
Citizen Outreach Boxes
We place Citizen Outreach Boxes at select establishments to raise small funds for supporting children’s welfare causes and other causes which need immediate support. The select establishments are deemed as SVGs. They are annually ranked and awarded for their support to create visibility and promote social causes.