KOCHI: Compassion, care and kindness to fellow humans have become qualities that are fast becoming obsolete around us. Especially with the youngsters who are busy trying to make it to the top of their career ladder. Nobody has the time to slow down and spare a second to extend a helping hand towards the ones in need.
It is under these circumstances, where values are on a downhill that Mahesh Parameswaran Nair, a techie, and his team of spirited youngsters have come forward with a noble gesture that they like to call HOPE or Hold On Pain Ends.
HOPE, the brainchild of Mahesh Parameswaran, an IT professional who works in Technopark, is an organisation aimed at lending a helping hand to the ones in need. “We try and provide help to the poorest of the poor,” says Mahesh the founder and chairman of the organisation. The organisation currently works from Mahesh’s home at Sasthamangalam, Thiruvananthapuram.
HOPE which was launched in January this year has already undertaken a lot of charitable and awareness programmes.
So how does this techie who has a busy schedule as an engineer manage to simultaneously take up such a huge responsibility?
“I always wanted to do something like this. It is the need of the hour. The recent incident in Thampanoor where a man succumbed to his injuries after lying on the roads bleeding with no one to attend to him is a gruesome situation. Such incidents should never repeat. It is just that I am really passionate about what I am doing so I manage to make time. Most days my day gets over by 3.30 am or 4 am. It is after my office work that I sit with this work. My wife is fully supportive of what I do without which I couldn’t have done most things,” Mahesh adds.
“The organisation was registered in February. Initially I started off with the help of a group of friends and help from family and relatives. Now there are around 50 volunteers who have come to us knowing about it through the social media and other sources,” Mahesh says.
Mahesh, 30, is the oldest member of this organisation with all the rest of them being below 30. Hence it truly is a bunch of vibrant youngsters setting an example for the rest to follow.
Among the members are doctors, engineers, students, policemen and the like. “Nobody was forced or coerced to join, all of them stay and work out of their own will.”
The members make it a point to meet every second Saturday to discuss their future plans and initiatives. Recently the organisation helped marry off two inmates of Sree Chitra Poor Home here. “We searched for apt grooms, sent their profiles for verification to the police and bore the expense of the marriage and food. We even gave the girls a small gift,” quips the techie.
It is not just this but the organisation regularly conducts blood donation camps, organ donation awareness camps, they have taken out an anti-narcotics road rally from Kowdiar to Secretariat, candle light vigil to create awareness on attending to victims of accidents, awareness camp at RCC on cancer care for life and the like.
So how do the volunteers arrange the funds to carry out their projects? “When it comes to finance, all the members including me, our friends and relatives pool in. Also we do some farming on a piece of land my family owns and sell the crop and generate income that way. We also go to residential colonies and request them for old newspapers which we sell. Also we generate money by selling jewellery that the members of the group make.”
The work on the farm is jointly done by the members of the group. At present the organisation jointly with two other charitable organisations is busy building a house for a family who were hitherto living in shacks.
This weekend too HOPE members have their hands full with a bit of tapioca farming on Mukesh’s land and cleaning the compound of the Government Homoeopathic Medical College Hospital Iranimuttam, here.
To know more about them you can visit their FB page www.facebook.com/HOPEFOUNDATIONTVM or their web pag : www.hopecharity.in.
You can also contact Mahesh at 8893836930.