It all begin when I had a conversation with Deepika Bai, a maid working in a gym who wanted someone to help her to manage her debt, someone could help her in buying ration for few months so that she could save some money and repay back. This conversation stayed with me and I spoke to my husband and on 20th Dec, 2008 “THE BIG GIFT FOUNDATION” was born. Deepika Bai was the first person we started to help with the ration. Initially I was collecting Rs100 from my friends’ n family to help the families. But soon realized it was too little to help someone so started to collect Rs200-500 every month.

Soon got 7 friends who shared the vision with me and we decided to register ourselves as a trust. It involved loads of paperwork but we finally got our registration certificate and the bank ac was opened in State Bank of Mysore, Borivli-W.

Every month was a learning experience for us,

The first month we reached out to 11 HIV+ affected people, we realized though we were all educated but we had no clue about this disease, and how little people are aware of that so many are affected and have no idea how to deal with, NPM Plus an NGO who are a group of volunteers suffering from this disease helped us a lot to understand and spread the awareness also.

We had just started our work, funds were just enough to help few families but we decided to help out a seven month old baby girl, Samruddhi , who had a hole in her heart and needed Rs 60000/- for the operation. We were able to raise much more than the required money, her operation was very successful and she is leading a normal life.

We helped Abhishek a small boy who needed Rs 15000- for his eye operation which again was a success.

We reached to nearly 30 kids and helped them in paying their school fees, got sponsors for nearly all the kids and bought new schoolbags, stationery and uniform for all these kids.

Onwards we have been paying fees for the school kids buying groceries and medicines for the needy families.

In 2009 we raised money for 10 operations and they all were successful.

One of our main success story is Ms Lata Nair a cancer surviour who was homeless when we met her. Now she working in a company as an office assistant and has got a place to live also. She is a living testimony of people who want to change their lives but have no support to do so.

We still raise money for cancer patients, kids or anyone who is deprived of medical facilities because of lack of funds.

But our main is to provide education to all kids who come from financially weak background because we strongly believe that education alone can break their cycle of poverty and hopelessness.

This write up is written by Ms Shailaja Rajayyan-Secretary of The Big Gift Foundation.