CHENNAI: Whenever old clothes get piled up and you want to donate them for charity, have you wondered how invariably the options boil down to just four or five special homes?
With more than 500 registered orphanages, shelters for the elderly and special homes in the city, the help from philanthropists does not pervade equally and gets accumulated in a few of the homes. “People interested in charity have approached me for suggestions to donate and I found myself naming the same few homes every time. It was always in my mind to make a list of obscure homes that need attention,” said Vimal, founder at VTrust, an NGO that works with special homes and orphanages since 2007.
After a month of analysis and fieldwork and visiting various homes in the city, members of Vtrust developed a new android-based mobile application — Vconnect you — that has a list of 45 homes in the city.
Available for use since April, the application consists of a database with all the details namely the number of people and their requirements and features of the homes within a 5 km radius from the area of user’s choice. “We can get these details online but they may be obsolete. To avoid this, we update our database every three months. We visit these shelters personally every three months to get an update from them and I believe that makes our app different from the rest. Our first update is due in August,” said Vimal.
Karun, a Radio Jockey and volunteer, emphasised that although the members are closely associated with the homes, the organisation has designed the application as a mere database of such homes and would not favour any of them in particular. He added that those willing to donate would directly approach the homes suggested.
In the coming days, the volunteers are looking to expand the database with more homes that are not well known. “We make sure that help reaches the right beneficiaries and are always on our feet to find more homes that need support; we are for equal growth,” said Karun.