A schoolboy skipped his cricket, table tennis and swimming for days to make calls or visit family friends to raise money for a proposed college. A septuagenarian wrote 120 letters in 10 days to collect funds for children with impaired hearing. A homemaker who had never asked anyone other than her parents for anything sought out everyone she could approach over WhatsApp to donate for education of the underprivileged.
The trio were among scores of big-hearted Calcuttans who joined hands to raise close to Rs 1 crore for the various charities they had pledged their support to during the second edition of the Tata Steel 25K, partnered by The Telegraph, on December 20.
This represents almost a five-fold increase - from Rs 20 lakh to Rs 95.71 lakh - over the proceeds from the first edition of the road race.
The funds raised by 26 corporate houses and 2,000-odd individuals would be shared by at least 37 NGOs involved in causes ranging from welfare of people with Parkinson's disease to protection of the rights of the girl child.
"Calcutta has shown great heart in raising the total charity amount by 375 per cent (over the previous edition of the race). Such a growth rate is unprecedented anywhere else in India," said Dilip Jayaram, CEO of Procam International that anchors the Tata Steel 25K.
Metro highlights a few of the individual fundraising initiatives and a cancer hospital whose efforts were recognised by the organisers at a function last week.
Youngest fundraiser: He is 13, which means he has to wait another five years to run the 25K. But there was no stopping Jainil Damani, a Class VIII student at La Martiniere for Boys, from running a charity campaign that raised Rs 1,34,100 for a proposed science college at Dharampur, in Gujarat's Valsad district.
"I started by calling up friends of my grandparents and visited some of them after school. I showed them brochures of the proposed institute and informed them that there is no science college in the Dharampur area, which has 100 schools," he said.
Jainil had picked the NGO Shrimad Rajchandra Educational Trust, which will build the college, when he enrolled for a shorter version of the road race last December. "Everyone I approached contributed something and that felt good. Even our domestic help contributed Rs 100, which is a huge amount for her," he said.
So, what inspired Jainil to support a charity? A story that father Mehul had told him about Mother Teresa.
All in the family: Bahadur and Jeru Postwalla, along with son Ratan, raised Rs 13 lakh for their school on Short Street: The Society for Oral Education of the Deaf. The 51-year-old school with eight teachers has 48 hearing-impaired students, out of whom only 10 can afford the monthly tuition fee of Rs 3,000.
Septuagenarian Bahadur raised Rs 8.59 lakh by mailing his friends. His was among the highest individual fundraising initiatives among those who had committed to raise at least Rs 1 lakh for a cause. Son Ratan, 40, who runs an HR consultancy, used social media to collect Rs 2.90 lakh.
Cause over ego: "My parents are the only people I have ever asked money from. It wasn't easy to shed my ego and ask people for money," said Tina Desai, a 35-year-old homemaker. "I was seeking help from everyone, even school friends I hadn't spoken to for almost 10 years!"
Tina raised Rs 7.8 lakh for the proposed science college in Dharampur. "Everyone except two or three persons didn't contribute," she said.
Tata Medical Center: Of the 37 NGOs associated with the ecent, this cancer hospital in New Town had the most number of corporate participants - 18 out of 26 - raising funds for it. The proceeds, Rs 29.52 lakh, would be used to provide treatment to underprivileged patients at subsidised rates.
"Our hospital gets 15,000 new patients every year... about 50 per cent of them are given financial assistance," said Sanjeev Kumar Agarwal, chief financial officer of the hospital.
