How would life have been for you if:
Your parents could only afford to choose one member among your siblings to enroll in school
The school was 10km away and
When you get there teachers are unprepared or unable to attend due to the large number of children.
It’s difficult to imagine, isn’t it? However; in some rural parts of India, children face this reality daily.
This isn’t where we’ll start our story, because what is fascinating is how events made it possible to transform one man into a tool for grassroots change. We will start our story by talking about Puneet
Puneet was your everyday corporate white collar; a management consultant coach, and also worked in the field of Learning Technologies. He lived and worked in Asia, Europe, North America and Africa. His work included building high performing teams, developing managers and leaders and delivering corporate workshops.
His work brought him around the world and on one of his birthdays he was a continent apart from his 3 year old daughter Ila. For his birthday, Ila sent Puneet a video wishing him a Happy Birthday. This video was the spark that lead to the creation of Creative Philanthropy, an online community dedicated to helping every living being, especially the most vulnerable.
To bring together a project of village-wide proportion the following things took place:
1) Expression of Soul
He expressed his soul through a form of art and sees how one person can make a difference. Puneet started his journey by writing a children’s storybook – Deepa Wishes Daddy Happy Birthday – for his then 3 year old daughter’s birthday, Ila. It was inspired by the video that she had put together for him. When completed, he felt inspired to share the book and use it to support the education of children who do not have as many resources as Ila does. And so, he committed all the profits of the sales of his first book for this cause.
2) Embarking on a Hero’s Journey
With goal set in mind, Puneet started his search for the first school to support. He asked for guidance from his friends and was pointed to Mercy of God Academy, a school run by a young couple in a remote village in the mountains of India, 6 hours drive away from the closest city. Puneet was determined to see for himself why he should support this school, and so he went on his journey to meet Jon and Rubina, the founders.
When he arrived, Puneet spent some time to get to know the founders, learn about the local situation, understand the impact of the project and determine what was needed for it to really help the underprivileged children of the area. He knew this was the right school to help. And so he started his work to promote the book and raise money for Mercy of God.
Puneet knew that the most effective way to have a strong impact for the project was to have a community of people working with him to help the children of Mercy of God, and future schools that they would want to support. And so he started gathering the support of other people who, like him, were inspired by their creativity to help those in need. And so he built his platform, Creative Philanthropy, to gather the support of a community and raise funding for education of children all around the world.
Join Mercy of God Academy and Make an impact on a child’s life
You can help bring better education to the children of Mercy of God Academy and the future schools that Creative Philanthropy will assist by sharing their campaign in your networks and donating to the project. You will find a lot of information on the Creative Philanthropy website, Facebook Page and the crowdfunding campaign. This project takes shape thanks to the many hands that help make it a reality, any amount helps!
