August 6, 2017
The Ten Crore Indians Giving contest required teams to conceptualize and design events to be organised during Daan Utsav 2017, with the aim of engaging large numbers of people in the Joy of Giving week. Thirteen teams presented their plans. The jury consisted of Venkat Krishnan, founder of GiveIndia, India’s first philanthropy exchange, Aarti Madhusudan, the founder of Governance Counts, an initiative that helps strengthen the Boards of NGOs, and Umesh Asher, the CEO of Vendiman.
The teams began their work on the evening of 5th August and prepared display boards to aid their presentation. Linking up with corporates and using street plays and flash mobs to reach people with the idea of Daan Utsav were recurring tools in the plans. Exploring the concept of not limiting giving to material things, one of the teams came up with a mobile school set up in a van that would educate and empower its recipients.
After scrutinizing all the entries, the jurors discussed their past experiences working in giving. Aarti Madhusudan talked about when an eight-year old girl’s words made her realise that giving could be small and that anyone could give. The women in the girl’s neighbourhood had to stand in a queue for hours just to get water for their household needs. The kids there decided that they would celebrate the week of giving by standing in the queues so their mothers could get a few more hours of sleep.
Volunteers at Manipal 