Why?

Why am I not amazed,

at what happens around me,

Did I not have a part to play,

Did I not want it this way?

Little did I know that all I have

is one life, one chance

to live a life of glory

to sing and dance.

Manu Foundation

I am writing this blog to talk about Manu Foundation an organization that I regularly donate money to. The organization choses meritorious students amongst the poor and funds their tuition and living expenses.

What really stands about the organization is that they really do a lot of due diligence to find out who would benefit most from their money. There are many organizations which strive to provide basic education to the masses. Manu foundation then choses the bright ones amongst the poor students and funds higher education for them. The strategy is to maximize the impact of every Rupee spent. The foundation trustees derive more satisfaction from helping a secondary school graduate to become an engineer / accountant / doctor etc. and become financially stable as against helping twenty students receive basic education.

Which paradigm you agree with (mass education vs higher education for a selected few amongst the poor) is essentially a personal choice. My choice resonates with that of the foundation. The impact to the future earnings of a bright student just because he received the right coaching for his medical / engineering / CA competition exams is really immense. Consequently the impact on the family is humungous in terms of economic stability.

What is encouraging is that a lot of students who got scholarships from the foundation come back and pay back, often more than what was invested on them. This helps increase the corpus and fund more students.

Personally I like the model, having always believed in meritocracy. I encourage all of you to go through the website and get in touch with the trust just in case you resonate with the cause.

http://www.manufoundation.in/

As a friend (if i can call her that), writes a post and as I listen to the song Desperado by Eagles, lying on the couch, I have my head spinning round and round.

Its been eons since I last wrote a blog. About TOI's purported dishonesty. And then I think, dishonesty is so pervasive in all walks of life. When I think of being dishonest to people that I have loved more than I will every love anyone, it pains me. It pains me, that at times I've been dishonest to myself.

Why are we dishonest? Why do we take a simpler route? Why do we hurt people who we don't intend to? I do not have the answers yet and will not look for them.

What I will look for is, how to be righteous in all things that I do, to be cognizant of my beliefs at all times, and to make up to people who mean a lot to me, even if that implies making hard sacrifices.