Aol Interviews Mad

Mad enough to make a difference? Last Updated: November 28, 2008 11:52:03

Get to know Make A Difference (MAD), an NGO for orphans, as co-founder Jithin C. Nedumala explains its vision, objectives and achievements. Tell us about MAD and its evolution. Make A Difference is a youth voluntary network that was started in Kochi around three years ago. It is a group of young people who try to bring about change in society by educating underprivileged people. It all started at the YMCA Boy's Home. A few college kids visited the orphanage. While there, they asked the kids what they wanted on the next visit. The surprise answer was 'books'. There and then, these few kids realised what was missing in society: quality education. Though the kids there went to schools, they went to ones that were barely satisfactory. Their knowledge of the English language was poor, rendering them incapable of adequate future employment. Even though these kids had the potential, the will to learn and achieve great heights, they were restricted by the existing infrastructure. The need was to equip them with proper English communication skills. This led to MAD starting its first-ever member orphanage. At first, the idea was only to spend some time with the kids, have a little fun and teach them English. But as time progressed, we realised that we had to take things more seriously. So we set about preparing and implementing a syllabus which would help us achieve our goals. We partnered with the Teacher Foundation of Bangalore to meet this end. By the end of the first couple of years, we had evolved a proper syllabus, not to mention the number of the orphanages in which we taught.

We also embarked on a Computer Project, making all our orphanages computerised. Today, our total kids-to-computer ratio is 6:1. Efforts are on to bring this down to 3:1. During the course of these three years, we established MAD branches in Kochi, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad, and are looking to spread out to a few more cities within the next year. Our volunteer base is around 400 now, and we teach roughly 1,200 kids. Our invested time and effort has certainly translated into the kids’ exuding confidence with better language skills.

Could you explain what defines the organisation you have co-founded and what your targets are? The defining point of our organisation, which was co-founded by Sujith Varkey and Kavin K.K., is the fact that it is managed by youth. Today’s youth are stereotypically considered to be brash and incapable of inspiring any good. But at MAD, we redefine the stereotype every day. Our volunteers are committed to the social cause and are responsible to the hilt. We have been successful in providing quality education to underprivileged children in India. Our reach is comparably small now, but we envision getting bigger in time. What do you view as your biggest obstacles as far as expanding this programme is concerned? Until now, MAD has been working voluntarily without any need for an administrative wing. However, as our project gets bigger and spreads wider, we realise that it is time we established an administration and increased the efficiency of our services. MAD has never been a big project. We have always managed to meet our overhead costs with the funds gathered by our core team members. Now, we find there is a need to establish a better infrastructure for the future. That is the biggest challenge we face right now. There are branches of MAD in different states. Are some more welcoming than others? How has the response been with respect to each state? Every state has a culture and attitude that is special to it. Pune, where the student community is active and thriving, welcomed MAD with both hands. The volunteer turnout for the programme was stupendous. Meanwhile, in Hyderabad, MAD was welcomed by the corporate crowd of Googlers. They were

slightly more serious but no less effective. In Kochi, where we started off, familial obligations prevent our volunteers from getting too involved, but we strive on, no matter what. MAD bagged the coveted Ashoka Youth Social Entrepreneur Award. Could you tell us a little bit about this award, how you came to be one of the nominees for this award, who the other contenders were and how winning the award has helped? Ashoka is a community of leading social entrepreneurs from around the world who work collectively to transform society and design new ways for people to become more productive, entrepreneurial and globally integrated. The purpose of the Youth Social Entrepreneur Competition was to discover and promote youth who had positively engaged with and impacted their communities. There were 521 entries for the competition from around the world. Of these, the judging pa nel selected 15 as finalists, of which MAD was judged the winner through online voting. There were several other contenders who we thought were equally deserving, and so we were honoured when the global community picked us as the winners. The award has brought much needed credibility to the organisation. And credibility has always been something that we have struggled to achieve. Now, people are finally recognising the value and importance of our project and accepting the work we have done. Moreover, the award has given us a global platform on which to raise awareness about volunteering. Our project is now a global platform for youth who want to impact their community by volunteering.

How do you see MAD’s progress five years from now? We have huge expansion plans for the future. In five years, we hope that we will have expanded to 21 cities, with a probable volunteer base of 2,000 and a correspondingly large base of kids that our project will cater to. The underprivileged crowd in India is getting bigger by the day. Hence, catering to a larger crowd and preventing the situation from getting out of hand is one of our major objectives.