Let’s Start the New Year 2023 by Doing Something Good for Our Soul

By Sanjeev Govila Blog

‘Doing Good to Our Soul’ is something we at Hum Fauji Initiatives (HFI) have been trying to do for a few years now through our NGO, HFI Welfare Foundation, a Govt recognised and registered charity organisation. We have helped many families and individuals before, during and after the Covid pandemic from whatever resources we could muster up.

We have been collecting and hoarding money – from our internal company resources, our personal resources, donations received from some gentle souls, and many more – for the new initiative that we’re launching today. Fortunately, we have now been able to build up some corpus when we can now do something worthwhile.

“We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.” – Mother Teresa

And what have we done all this for?

There are a large number of families of our demised Jawans, Sailors and Airmen (Other Ranks – OR) all across the country who have fallen on hard financial times due to various reasons – the dues received by the family on the death of the OR taken away from them on some pretext or the other by family members and/or others, even pension not being received by them fully or partially due to some legal loopholes or machinations by somebody, etc. Each one of us knows such cases where small children of many such families are not able to even get basic education due to financial constraints.

That is where we want to help and get those children to school.
And we want your help in identifying such families in dire need of financial support for school education of their children. Would you be up to it?

“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” – Mohammed Ali

The help required from you:-

Through your own knowledge and contacts, identify the family of a demised OR which is absolutely on the brink of financial penury and it is not able to send their child to school even for basic education. The family could be from your own unit or regiment, battalion, formation or anybody else– the connection is immaterial. We would rather prefer families of OR who have died due to physical casualties in peace areas than casualties in active areas.
The child so identified would be referred to as YOUR SPONSORED CHILD and we would be very happy if you, your spouse, and maybe your children too, would care for the child as somebody who you’ve truly adopted.
Fill up the form that is available at this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdKejrw-HnJjWoJG4g-Ua0IoomQnvq42BZ31RxF_CAiTGaoog/viewform
Be prepared to act as the mentor to that family and child including travel to their location yourself maybe once in Six months or a year, being in touch with the family constantly, guiding them, and ensuring that the child is genuinely being educated well and is going to school.

The support from our side would be:-

Financial support in terms of school fees, class books and one set of school uniform. Other school accessories would be provisioned for on as required / due basis.
Reimbursing your expenses incurred in travelling to the family. Of course, if you wish to bear any or whole part of this expense yourself any time, it will help us support more children with our limited resources.

Our aim would be to sponsor the adopted children through the entire school education once she/he is taken under your sponsorship or till the financial situation of the family stabilises, whichever is earlier.

Initially, we would start with 20 children, aiming for a fair distribution in areas across the country. As we build up some experience and financial resources in this initiative, we would try to get more and more affected fauji children under its wings.

We’re aiming to sponsor the selected children from the start of the coming Academic Year in 2023.

Even those who do not sponsor a child can help us in this initiative:

Though we have been able to build up a corpus to start the above, we well know that it is not enough. We therefore need as much financial help as possible from our fauji community for this. We request you to help us undertake this onerous task that we have set out to do. Donations can be made to us using the link: https://www.instamojo.com/@hfiwelfare/

HFI Welfare Foundation is a Govt registered Section 8 company (registration number 345021), which can undertake charity activities and also take donations for such activities from the public. Donations made to HFI Welfare Foundation are eligible for tax benefits under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act 1961.

“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill