As responsible citizens of our motherland, it is our duty to bring a change, even if it’s a small one. With so many types of adversities around us, sometimes it becomes difficult to figure out, where to start.
So, we at Rise for India decided to start with what better than the little angels sent from God, the kids. Kids who have been victims of abuse. Abuse in the form of child labor, mental exploitation, sexual harassment, trafficking and many other ways.
We realized how important it is to take care of the kids, who are indeed the backbone of India. Our campaign, Save the Kids, was all about spreading awareness regarding the mishaps which happen with kids in our country. We came up with shocking real life stories of kids, who have seen the level of darkness which we cannot even imagine.
And with the overwhelming response from more than 400,000 readers, the campaign became a huge success. We didn’t even realize when and how, tens of thousands of readers joined our initiative and followed it throughout. It is because of them that we managed to achieve way more than what we intended when the campaign had started. Shivprabha Charitable Trust and Alphabets, also helped us a great deal in bringing out stories in front on the people which otherwise would have been left untold. And how can we forget to mention our wonderful team of bloggers who worked extremely hard to make sure that we manage to save the kids in some way or the other.
The four things which make us extremely proud as we reach the flag end of our campaign are –
- A documentary making team has decided to make a short documentary film on an article which was published as a part of #SaveTheKids campaign. Hopefully this documentary will reach a large audience and more people will come to know about such inhuman act which exists in our society.
- We helped our bit to bring the signature count very close to 1 lakh, on the petition for Kamalika Das, which is going to be forwarded to HRD minister, Smriti Irani. This will be a huge step towards helping out the kids in school who need counselling or even psychiatric help to deal with their problems and issues. As of now, there is no provision made for the students in cases where they need extra support from the school, and the schools are not obliged to do the same.
- Majority of bloggers in our team have done their bit for the kids not just through their writing, but physically as well. They took the onus upon themselves to help needy kids around, with some books and food. They talked to the kids who begged on the streets or worked as child labours, tried and to understand what their condition was and then help accordingly. Our bloggers went to orphanages and got to know the stories of the kids of lived there, and they managed to bring them out in front of the entire world
- Juli Singh (name has been changed), one of the avid followers of our campaign finally decided to talk about how her father raped her when she was a child. She hadn’t told this to anybody before, and as she told us, she got the courage to do the same from the gut wrenching story of Priya Jason that was written by our blogger Ranjini Maitra as a part of the campaign. This is the mail that we received from her:
“Dear admin,
I am **** from Calcutta … I read one of your article “Every Night, My Father Forced Me To Sleep Naked With Him.” from your website.I have being from the same situation…
I was sexually abused by my father when I was in class 5 and it was three times until I told my mom and then we got separated… I cannot rewind the past but I would like to share my story and help others who have faced these situations… but I have a request that I would like to maintain my privacy because non of my friends know about this except my relatives and my mother but I assume that she thinks I don’t remember anything since I was very young… The painful part is I never knew what was happening with me…
I am in a great pain because my heart breaks when I see a happy father and daughter around and I wish I would have that kind of childhood for me… I look forward for your reply
Thanks”
Apart from all of this, those little emails of love, appreciation and suggestions that we received from our readers throughout the campaign was a huge motivation for us to continue.
We feel proud as well as concerned. Proud because we managed to something, and concerned because still there is so much to be done. The road ahead is tough, and if everyone stands together against such evils of the society, then there is nothing which cannot be achieved.
Its time to rise for our country. Its time to Rise For India.
