Amid chaos, where hundreds continue to grieve after a massive fire destroyed nearly 2,000 homes in Damu Nagar slum, on December 7, a Mumbai-based duo decided to intervene and take matters into their hands.
Amid chaos, where hundreds continue to grieve after a massive fire destroyed nearly 2,000 homes in Damu Nagar slum, on December 7, a Mumbai-based duo decided to intervene and take matters into their hands.
Shazia Merchant, 32, and Karishma Velani, 24, had been working for the betterment of society respectively before deciding to join hands and form Bridge India, a not-for-profit organisation. The co-founders have a mission to fulfill - to help marginalised or underprivileged communities in urban India.
Shazia Merchant, the co-founder of Bridge India, Iamin's on-ground partner, surveying a family in Damu Nagar
Shazia Merchant, who is a digital marketeer and an entrepreneur by profession, explained how important it was for her to start this NGO. "I belong to and have been raised in a community (Ismaili) that’s very close-knit and is fairly active in helping the underprivileged and marginalised, both from within and outside of the community. The help that the community sends out on a regular basis is both in cash, kind and time from volunteers and every person is taught the concept of Seva (service) from very early on. In college, NSS broadened the avenues and the opportunities to reach out and help people increased manifold. Ever since, the inclination to contribute in any way I can has been a part of my being,” said Shazia.
Coincidentally, Karishma Velani, a chartered accountant by profession, had a similar foundation. “I started working under the banner of community service and slowly grew to see the bigger issues faced by society. This intrigued me to take a step further to help children by providing quality supplementary education. Slowly, Shazia and I together decided to join hands and do something bigger for this section of the society,” Karishma said.
Karishma Velani with the slum kids
Shazia pointed out that the work of Bridge India is not restricted to women and children; it’s just the starting point. “As women and young professionals and entrepreneurs, the sensitivity that’s needed to interact with children and women comes naturally to us and that’s where we begin our intervention. For starters, we decided to help the Damu Nagar slum victims,” Shazia said.
These two firebrand social workers as ground partners, along with Team iamin, are hoping to take proactive steps and lead the effort of rebuilding lives of Damu Nagar slum victims.
Talking about the relief measures planned for the affected population, Karishma said, “We plan to provide quality supplementary education, livelihood training, and vocational guidance and citizenship rights training to the victims. We’re getting in touch with schools in which children from the area are enrolled in and will very soon have professionals trained in disaster relief to start daily meditation sessions for kids. This is to help them cope with the tragedy they have witnessed and ensure stability of the mind and the body, which will also help them concentrate on studies.”
Speaking about hurdles faced so far, if any, while offering relief material to the Damu Nagar slum victims, Shazia said, “Honestly, we can either say that we’ve been lucky so far or we’ve not gone out and demanded too much from individuals. Every time we’ve gone out trying to raise smalls funds and mobilize volunteers, people in our communities, workplaces and generally in the city have opened their hearts. Some of them have gone out of their way to help.”
“However, breaking into the communities, with all the scepticism and little or no trust on ‘NGOs’ is something we have seen on field. We don’t blame the communities since they have for decades seen multiple organisations and elected representatives make tall promises and not keep them. The trust we need to earn and we’re working towards that – one day, one campaign and one person at a time,” she added.
Bridge India is a new organisation and plans are to spread its wings slowly to other cities and states. “We intend to consolidated our work in Mumbai first and formulate solid yet seamless processes, intervention models and best practices before moving to another city. Also, we believe in collaborating with multiple stake holders, individuals and organisations (public, private, for profit, social entrepreneurs, not-for-profit) whenever and wherever possible to help them maximise their efforts towards helping communities, as opposed to reinventing the wheel. For example, if there is a disaster in another city or state and if an organisation we trust that’s working on ground zero and reaches out to us for help with aid, audit, volunteer mobilisation or fund raising, we’ll jump on board without a moment of hesitation,” shared Shazia and Karishma.
If you wish to donate funds to our already live campaign on Milaap.org (a crowd funding platform), click here.
The article was originally published on www.iamin.in
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 "Shazia Merchant and Karishma Velani, the co-founders of Bridge India briefing the volunteers before starting the survey at Damu")
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