Why
we changed our vision & programmes from August
28, 2013 ?
On 28th August 2013, founder
Sanjay Kumud Moreshwar Bapat had an almost fatal
accident at 5.30 AM when he had gone for a morning
walk with his father. His father who was 82 years
then (he
wants each one to donate blood and had keen
interest in helping nomadics
/ tribals), had the courage to get him home
and then to the hospital with his younger son
(he was in 11th standard then). His wife had to
stay at home because his older son has sensory
integration challenge and cant live alone at home.
Within an hour, when relatives came home to take
care of older son, his wife rushed to the hospital.
(We later realised that even world champions go
through similar cases and you can see Jordan
Spieth is world champion in Golf. But sports is
not the only thing in his life. Ellie, Jordan’s
younger sister with special needs, is his constant
source of support and grounding. We have never
met individual citizen Jordan Spieth but please
imagine his goodness and the goodness of so many
individuals who go through such situations in
life)
Within 3 months of the almost fatal accident,
founder started working from home and also started
going to office by an auto (the office is 3 minutes
away by walk and it takes 1.5 minutes to go there
by an auto. Our founder couldnt walk to go to
the office because of the traffic). Now he works
on all days treating the work as a hobby with
responsibility.
He also realised the importance of all stakeholders
irrespective of their age, caste, religion, political
significance or profession because good people
came to support him financially as well as keenly
invested time in the hospital (especially the
school mates of the founder who stayed overnight
with him like Abhay
who is more than just a school mate because he
helped adoption of a person way back in 2003)
Our
founder & his family can never imagine the
help he received from his college mates Sunil
Joshi & Anil
Bhot who used to come to the hospital &
at home to teach basics.
Key organisations which are Indian organisations
as well as Multi National Corporates, supported
him immediately. It was nice to have faith in
our organisation because in October 2013, 800
to 1000 employees from an MNC including the CEO
were in Municipal schools in Mumbai, an employee
volunteering programme we do with them since 2008.
One person (highly difficult for anyone in this
world to replicate) who supported the family considerably
was Venkat Krishnan (IIM - A post graduate and
founder of Give
India; he spends most of his time in helping
India develop faster)
Our founder realised the key fact that doctors
(he is thankful to Dr Harshad Purandare and to
Jupiter
Hospital ) treat a patient like a patient
irrespective of the mother tongue, caste, religion,
nationality. While legally founder was borne in
India, has a religion & caste, he now believes
that he is a universal citizen, with truth as
the religion and he does not believe in any caste.
Founder
realised the fact that millions of individuals
& institutions are doing good for the community
and instead of investing time in working for the
benefit of the small size of community, we now
need to integrate the goodness of millions of
individuals & institutions which work on all
social, developmental, nation building, sustainability
issues for their communities, countries, continents,
world and this universe.
Founder
also realised that as humans we take care of humans
& nature. But it is key to take care of
living things (like tigers who are part
of wild life. Yes, some humans treat them with
goodness but most of humans are scared to go close
to tigers) and non living things (like
the vehicles we use to go to our offices...these
buses, trains, automobiles, some times air planes..
all are non living things but how useful they
are to people).
While
communities, countries, continents are key, we
also realised the importance of oceans (seeing
how our solid waste which is thrown in the oceans
damages countries). See Midway
lands which was formed roughly 28 million
years ago. Of the 1.5 million Laysan Albatrosses
that inhabit Midway, nearly all are found to have
plastic in their digestive system. Approximately
one-third of the chicks die. The reason for these
deaths is attributed to the albatrosses confusing
brightly colored plastic with marine animals (such
as squid and fish) for food.
Our vision now is basic universal development
by 2050.
We know that development challenges will always
be there after 2050. So basic.
Of course this is with or without us.
We
were working on development issues in India. We
always knew that corporates as a stakeholder are
one of the key source of sharing time & money
and all the corporates put together have millions
of employees who can share their time, skills,
core competency in management for the communities
and those who work with the communities..
We were doing research on CSR since 2000. That
time, for most of the corporates, CSR was seen
as philanthropy. We started global CSR (India
and other countries across the world) research
in 2010 and our research indicated that for many
corporates, CSR has gone far beyond philanthropy.
First of all, the corporates must be good in terms
of its ethics, governance, diversity (sustainability
tree roots), then they must ensure that every
business process (like materials management, purchase,
finance, HR ...) must have an angle of CSR within.
Similarly issues like regulations, compliances
... are key.
We
then realised that it is not just corporates but
governments, NGOs, funding agencies, media, celebrities,
consultants, researchers, ad agencies, PR agencies
and all institutional stakeholders must follow
these practices.
We
know that globally CSR is known as Corporate Social
Responsibility. Keeping CSR word same, we changed
the long form of CSR to Conscience, sustainability
& reputation.
Now, while one of our cofounder works to make
a living because after the almost fatal accident,
we realised that money is critical for human existance,
our cofounder who had a fatal accident, works
for promotion of all stakeholders across the world
doing good. And instead of just one country and
other countries in this world, we have started
promoting the good work being done by great citizens
for the oceans and this universe.
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