When Mitesh Lohiya and his friends decided to start an NGO in 2009 to address holistic improvement of social conditions, little did they think that in three years they would be heading a 8,000-strong student workforce. “In addition to the 7,000 volunteers in Hyderabad, we have 1,000 more in other cities of India working for Street Cause. Such response makes us tremendously happy,” says Lohiya, a final-year BTech chemical engineering student of Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology (CBIT), and one of the founding members of Street Cause.
The NGO has divisions in 18 different colleges in Hyderabad. “The seven of us who decided to start the NGO belong to different colleges. This helped us expand our base. The publicity was through word-of-mouth and we went on to recruit volunteers through a systematic process and started divisions across colleges. Slowly it spread to other institutions as well,” says Lohiya, who is presently the chairman of Hyderabad Youth Assembly project, which conducts policy discussions on realising the millennium development goals of the UN.
“Ours is a structured organisation, which helps us run it smoothly. Each college that has a division of Street Cause can address issues ranging from education, health, sanitation, women’s empowerment and others through the respective departments. We have adopted orphanages and slums, raised funds for students in government schools and carried out medical camps,” says the 20-year-old, who was inspired to start a group of his own after volunteering for other NGOs.
“None of the organisations I volunteered for addressed the issues which are interlinked. One cannot talk about women’s empowerment without addressing the issue of education,” he observes.
The popularity of the NGO lies in the fact that it stresses on the voluntary nature of social work. Street Cause has completed over 95 tasks, two charity parties and projects in a span of just two years. “Every weekend we discuss a specific issue, by way of organising camps or working at the grass-roots level. Since the schedule is relaxed, volunteers rarely back out citing academic pressure,” says Lohiya. Street Cause has a rigorous selection process for volunteers. It is meant to gauge the motivation of the applicants.
The final-year student does not want to move away from the NGO that has a great reach. “None of the activities I did for the organisation seemed like work, it was more of a passion. For the new volunteers, we try to instil the same amount of passion to get the work done,” says Lohiya, who plans to continue
working for Street Cause after graduation as well. Visit www.streetcause.org
— payal@newindianexpress.com