Almost every year our country has to face natural disasters in some form. It may be an earthquake in Gujarat, floods in Orissa... In our country, these calamities create havoc.
In course of my work, i have found that after such calamities, many people like to donate money or materials to relief fund. We assume that most donations come from rich people, but that is not true. On the contrary, people from the middle class and lower middle class, help more. Rarely do rich people participate wholeheartedly.
As I’m interested in social service i joined the Leo club. A branch of Lions club for youth. last year when Vijayawada was almost drowned due to floods we thought to help them behalf of our Leo club and collected some money and material from our club members but its not enough. So we thought of asking some high class people and people in a good position.
Some companies came forward and gave us there valuable time so that we can tell the actual situation of the people now. Everything was ready and was about to start in 10mins. As the president of Leo club i have to give the lecture, But I was not sure how many people in the audience would really understand the speech and change themselves.
After my talk was over, I met some people. It was an affluent company and the employers were well-off and well-dressed. They were all very emotional after the lecture.
They started telling me, We buy may clothes every month. Can we donate our old clothes to those who are affected by floods? Can you co-ordinate and send them? Some of them offered other things.
We have grown-up children, we would like to give their old toys and some vessels.
I was very pleased at the reaction. And asked them to send their bags to the leo club office, and I’ll see that they reach the right persons.
Within a week , our office was flooded with hundreds of bags. I was proud that my lecture had proven so effective.
One Sunday along with some members of our club and workers, started opening the bags, What we saw left us amazed and shocked. The bags were brimming over all kinds of junk! piles of high heeled slippers(some of them without the pair), unwashed shirts, transparent, cheap saris, toys which had neither shape nor colour, unusable bed sheets, aluminium vessels, broken cassettes were soon piled in front of us like a mountain. There were only a few shirts, saris and usable materials.
It was apparent that instead of sending the material to a garbage, these people had transferred them to our office in the name of donation. The men and women i had met that day were bright, well travelled, well-off people. If educated people like them behave like this, What would uneducated people do??
The other day a company called siri's gave us permission for lecture, But i was not interested after seeing all these. But have to go as there is no other choice for me. As we entered the hall there were about 200 people in the hall. All are lower middle class people. So I thought of giving the lecture in a brief manner and wanted to end the show as fast as possible.
After the lecture many of them came to me asking many questions and the things they want to donate. I thought if the high class people cannot give the material that can be used by the people affected by floods, how can these people give??
Again in a week our office is flooded with many bags. We started opening those bags expecting the same result, and this time we are really amazed and shocked. All the material send by them are really useful and we are very happy that we can help them totally as we have sufficient amount.
But we also felt ashamed by our behaviour (not answering them properly and just telling them to send the material to our office) or thought that day when we went for giving lecture to them.
This lesson from those people, has stayed with me ever since. If at all imp helping anyone today, it is because of the lesson by those simple souls. I did not learn them in any school or college.
