Pixels together form a beautiful picture; parts make the whole. When there is a need for a good amount of money to solve a problem, it is difficult for a single individual to contribute the entire fund. Imagine if there were a large number of socially conscious individuals willing to fund the cause.

In February 2015, an organisation collected a small amount of Rs 300 per donor from just 161 young contributors and made a difference to women from extremely impoverished and difficult background through an organisation called ‘Snehalaya’. With just Rs 48,300, they were able to provide four sewing machines to Snehalaya which, in turn, is conducting free tailoring classes for these women thereby impacting over 100+ lives thus far. This was their first impact.

Sewing machines donated by YVO : Snehalaya

On December 2017, with the help of 734 donors, the NGO donated Rs 2,81,580 to ‘Shree Gurudev Bahuuddeshiya Samajik Sanstha’ (SGBSS) which works with blind and mentally challenged children. The same organisation channelized the donation received for the month of December 2017 towards equipping Divya Vidyalaya with 3 e-learning digital classroom systems and a full-fledged audio system consisting of amplifiers, microphones which will be used for teaching, school functions and music classes. This is their 35th impact.

Imagine an organisation doing it regularly across India. Wouldn’t that be an amazing thing to happen to thousands of people in this country? Youth Volunteers Organisation (YVO) is one such organisation.

YVO, based in Mumbai, saw the light of the day in Feb 2015 with 161 donors in the first month. The organisation encourages individuals, in particular, youth, to donate a minimum of Rs 300 monthly and the collective pool of funds are used to support NGOs which are working on sustainable life-changing causes which make the beneficiary stand on their own feet. The NGOs are selected through a rigorous scrutinising and vetting process. Every month a different NGO is chosen.

YVO channelized the donation received for the month of September 2017 towards equipping TOUCH MISSION with textbooks for 9th grade, 10th grade, Junior college and Senior college for there TOUCH – TEXTBOOK BANKS.

Also, YVO is very transparent. One can check out all the NGOs that YVO has supported on their website.

Inspiration

While studying in the USA, Siddharth Ladsariya, observed that the youth in the country have a great sense of nation-building which is missing in the youth in India. Here, only people who have reached a certain position in life, think about giving back to the society. This triggered Siddharth to involve the youth in India through YVO.

Sidharth says, “On a casual outing with my friends when he raised concerns that were making him restless was the day when the idea of ‘Youth Volunteers Organisation’, a platform with the philosophy “SMALL ACT, BIG IMPACT” was born.”

Supporters

The initial support for YVO was from like-minded friends who completely synced with the idea and helped in designing the whole concept. These were youngsters coming from different professional backgrounds.

YVO would have been impossible without the support of Mr Rameshbhai Kacholia from Caring Friends who has dedicated decades of his life vetting NGOs and doing social service. “He has been mentoring us and guiding us on how to scrutinize NGOs,” said Siddharth.

Challenges

Mobilising the youth to be willing to make a change is the core challenge they are tackling with. Even after being convinced with the concept of YVO, it takes some encouragement and initial push to start contributing. The challenge gets amplified when they need to convince people to make a monthly fixed contribution. Money is one aspect of the challenge.

YVO wants people to start uniting the youth of India to start thinking about the country. The idea is that people shouldn’t stop at Rs 300. They have examples, where people have started donating more money, more efforts and more time towards nation building. To get so many youngsters to join them will take time, patience and perseverance as the word spreads slowly and steadily in social initiatives.

Sustainable work

“We identified 4 major bottlenecks that stopped youth from giving,” explained Siddharth.

TIME – Youngsters have different priorities and do not have time to spare for social causes. MONEY – Youngsters do not have large amounts of disposable money to give away. TRUST – The trust was missing because there was no transparency, a lot of NGOs were getting famous for the wrong reasons. DUE DILIGENCE FOR SUSTAINABLE CAUSES – Youngsters hesitate in giving money to beggars, thinking indirectly they are encouraging begging. Solutions At YVO, they have ensured that the donor does not need to give any time at all if they don’t want to. Even volunteers only have to spare 4 hours in a month. They realized that Rs 10 a day is a relatively insignificant…