PRARTHANA KAUL- Why I moved from the Corporate World to the Social Sector

By BWA Envoy
March 26, 2022
2 Minutes Read

The more you do, the more you want to - Hi, I am Prarthana, born and brought up in Dandeli, a small and beautiful town in North Karnataka. Moved to Bangalore, completed my CA Internship, did PGDBA (Finance) from Symbiosis Centre for Distance Learning, and started working at IBM. I transitioned from the corporate sector to the social sector in June 2006, when I felt volunteering on weekends wasn’t enough. I realized that if I want to bring in a real change, I needed to dirty my hands on the ground. Fortunately, my family supported me, and I joined iVolunteer.in, an organization that connects volunteers to NGOs to share their time, skills, and passion.

During this journey, I had the opportunity to interact with hundreds of non-profits and thousands of volunteers working for a spectrum of causes. As I slowly realized how disability as a cause is skewed to the bottom of the pyramid, I conceptualized and started GiftAbled.org (www.giftabled.org) with my life partner, Prateek in December 2013. India has over 100 million people with disabilities with a significant proportion living in rural areas. Less than 1% are meaningfully employed with hardly any means to sustain themselves. Most of our education and healthcare setup is either inaccessible or unequipped to deal with people with disabilities. A study conducted by CyberMedia Research Ltd. in 2013 in the IT-BPM Industry, revealed that the percentage of employees with disabilities vis-a-vis total employees was only 0.36%. According to equiv.in. a recruitment platform only 34 lakhs of about 1.34 crore people with disabilities in the employable age have a job. According to NSSO just 1.2% of the 3.6 lack disabled youth are enrolled in universities and colleges. It brings the stark reality into an established truth that India’s higher educational system is not accessible to 98.8% of its disabled youth.

GiftAbled runs virtual courses for youth with disabilities to provide tech and non-tech job opportunities in the corporate world. Primarily our objective and focus are to create a trained cadre of youth with disabilities with skill sets matching the industry requirements. And all classes are in English and are accessible to people with disabilities. GiftAbled's goal for the next decade is to partner with and convert existing assets like schools, hospitals, and skill centres making them accessible and inclusive for people with disabilities across all 732 districts. This will help us to achieve 5 Sustainable Development Goals:

• SDG 3 Good Health & Well-Being
• SDG 4 Quality Education
• SDG 8 Good Jobs & Economic Growth
• SDG 10 Reduced Inequalities

We focus on the inclusion of people with disabilities through skilling, health, and education. GiftAbled is a social enterprise that strives to create an ecosystem of like-minded individuals so that we can collectively build an inclusive society. We aim to empower individuals such that they can live a life with dignity and self-esteem. So yes, GiftAbled is a for-benefit social enterprise that focuses on creating an equitable environment for persons with disabilities. Today our passionate team supports thousands of people with disabilities.

As I am writing this article, about my journey hundreds of stories and innumerable learnings flash in front of me. So, let me try to share a few takeaways from my journey and see if I can add a relevant story from the memory book. See things from a different perspective and ‘just be there!’ It is a basic human nature and tendency to view things from one angle on most occasions. However, while I worked with either the underprivileged children or with the geriatric population, I learned that -

• Most of the time, all that people need is your time. You just need to be there to listen to them!
• It is important to broaden one’s perspective and think like a child who isn’t restricted in their thoughts and therefore thinks from various angles.

I distinctly remember one Ajji (grandma) requesting me, “Prarthana, can you send one volunteer every week, for 10 minutes?”. Curiously I enquired, “Why Ajji?”. Her response was, “I have six children, all of whom are well to do and staying in Bangalore. Yet, here I am, at an old age home. I want to still believe that someone is there to hear or just read the newspaper to me for five minutes”. Just think of the impact your five minutes could bring on someone!

Rasathi, an eight-year-old sweetheart then, was sharing a story with me one day. She began with, “Ajji makes yummy Jalebi and chakkuli”. She then asked me “Why do you think I am saying jalebi and chakkuli?” Before I could answer, she said, “because these are my favorite dishes na?” She then continued with her story and concluded by sharing that a crow had finally taken away all her jalebi and chakkuli. I still remember this decade-old incident where I felt helpless listening to both. Yet, I realized that they had just shared their life story and that although I loved listening to this, I couldn’t fully get it because I was blessed and not in their shoes. At the end of the day, all that Ajji and Rasathi needed was to just have someone to be there and listen to them.

Be patient! You cannot add days to their life, but you can add life to their days. Providing care with dignity makes a world of difference when there is no hope or cure for a disability. This was my learning while working with cancer patients and people with severe disabilities. While fulfilling the wishes of those children suffering from a life-threatening illness, I witnessed how a single wish held power, hope, magic, and yes, changed lives positively. Of the innumerable stories that were born during my interactions over the years with patients at a cancer hospice during Diwali celebrations, one interaction is distinctly vivid in my memory.

During one of my post-event visits to the hospice, I saw a 22-year-old patient, lying on his death bed, smiling, and doing the one-minute energiser I had done with them during an event a week ago. This image reinforced the power of volunteering and how a simple activity can leave a lasting impression on someone’s last few days. The other story is when we learned that the final wish of a seven-year-old child with terminal cancer was to have a fish in his fish pond. This child, we learned was throwing a tantrum and refusing to eat for the past three days until he got “his fish”. Once we fulfilled his wish he settled down and said, “Amma, I want to eat, please give me food!” So, you see, this is the power of a single action that made his last day on earth beautiful. He passed away that very same day, knowing that his final wish was fulfilled.

We still have a long way to go, and we must work collectively to foster inclusion and coverage for everyone including caregivers. The other interaction that remained with me, was when I met a young bubbly girl who was a Bharatanatyam dancer. I learned that she had a fall from the 3rd floor of her building and ended up with a spinal cord injury which left her wheelchair-bound. It was so tragic that she finally died due to the lack of medical support and rehabilitation. This made me realize how we are still way behind and how much work there is left for us to do collectively.

During my journey with the NGO sector, I have witnessed the transition of seeing parents/caretakers who fear what would happen to their children after they were no more. Today, the very same parents/caregivers proudly say that because of the vocational training their child received, their child is now the breadwinner in the family. This leads to a thought of how caregivers are an invisible army of people providing a vital service, whose own needs are often routinely ignored. I do sessions for volunteers, beneficiaries, caregivers, and non-profits. Each time I remind them of how each one of them would be a role model to someone. That’s the role we play, and I am proud of each one of us for doing working sincerely, dedicatedly, passionately, and most importantly compassionately.

Today, I am reminded of the words of Marie Curie, “One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done” Yes! The more you do, the more you want to do...