Challenging the status quo

As a kid, everytime I bumped into a news article featuring death and devastation, I used to think: how cool it would be if everyone in this world died all at once so that no one could feel sad at someone's departure, and how wonderful it would be to live in a perennially misery-free state. It was just a passing thought of a naive mind. With time, my naivete gave way to frustration when I found myself complaining against everything imperfect in the system (which I do till date). Gradually, I realized that status quo doesnt change on its own. One HAS to act and take baby steps to change things. One such baby step goes by the name of Fast Forward India a non-profit organization that I started with a couple of friends back in 2006.

The basic objective of FFI is to help college students carry out projects that reach out to the disadvantaged. India is a country where there are tonns of NGOs floating around in every nook and corner. We didnt want to be just another well-intetioned NGO with zero ground results. We *really* wanted to positively impact people's lives. It was a big deal, given that we were not physically present in India to do any work. Our first step was to form a core team of like-minded students in my undergrad college in India who would do all the ground work. We then formed another team of advisors/mentors (in India and the US) who have been successful social entrepreneurs. After many weeks of brainstorming with these teams helped us zoom into 2-3 potential projects that were neither too big to be overwhelming nor too small to be boring.


It is very difficult to keep volunteers motivated over a long period of time, esp. in a not-for-profit startup, where there are no monetary incentives. At times, it can be very frustrating with the pace at which things move. So we thought of different ways to inspire our volunteers. We invited a bombay-based filmmaker (Sanjay Jha), who is also involved with UNICEF, to deliver a motivational workshop. We also organized a trip to local NGOs so that our volunteers could see first hand experience different ways to solve problems faced by the community.

With all the pre-launch homework in place, we decided to launch 2 pilot projects - Jagriti, a computer literacy project, and Rakt Rekha, a blood donation project. I personally architected the compter literacy project because of its potential to help students in the long run. We started off with a seed funding from a bay area starup, and despite all the resource constraints, taught two batches of 50 students in 2007. The biggest constraint was (and is) funding. But thanks to a successful completion of the pilot, we are seeing new avenues opening up. For example, few months back, the IG-prisons of Jharkhand expressed his desire to start a computer literacy project for the prisoners in Dhanbad Central Jail. It was a big shot in the arm. But as we are thinking of expanding this to other locations in India, the funding issues still remain. Any ideas/suggestions?

I genuinely believe that if this initiative encourages others to start something like FFI, thats a victory for our cause. Needless to say, if you want to start something similar at a local scale, I would be more than willing to help you with my experience. My plans for FFI are quite ambitious, despite all the resource constraint. In the next 3-5 years, I aim to expand FFI to atleast 4-5 other locations. A state of perennial misery-free-ness might be utopian, but a journey of thousand miles, they say, beings with a single step. Cliched though it may sound, the journey - to change the status quo - has just begun.