Making a Change - Helping When You Can

The viscous circle of poverty keeps churning on like the gears in a well-oiled clock, and the only way to put a spoke in it is to start making a change.  At The Ashoka Tree, our idea of ‘making a change’ means helping where we can and connecting people who need help with those who want to help.  Our visit to the Isolation Ward at the Ernakulam General Hospital reinforced that.  Not only does there remain a huge gap in the kind of medical facilities available through different sections of society, general awareness of different diseases and their prevention seems more a part of advertisements on state television than an actual reality.

The Ashoka Tree, thus, organized a small collection of bed linen, night clothes and toiletries, with a little help from our little helpers at the Kids Club and a lot of help from our friends, for the Isolation/Destitute Ward at the General Hospital.

While conditions couldn’t seem to get worse at this ward, with the general aura of despair and hopelessness mixed with the smell of disinfectant, the small ray of hope that spreads into sunshine remains when we see people help these homeless patients (helping them change, eat and go through their basic daily functions).  It is because of these people that we get reminded that there remains a part of humanity where we still feel – where we care and love enough to spread a little happiness in the lives of people we don’t know.  Elsewhere in this hospital, there remain numerous NGOs also working towards the welfare of people who cannot afford private healthcare, from providing drinking water to palliative care.

However, though most of the patients wouldn’t have been able to use the toiletries we donated, what helped is that there are people who can help them use these; that there are people who will help them wear the new ‘mundus’ and use clean towels as soon as they have been given to them, that there still remain helpers to change bedsheets ever so often as they change bedpans.

Human beings as a species have mastered the art of making things easier for themselves.  From the super smartphone to now even the tiniest texting device that is no more than a little strap – things seem to get easier and easier.  And yet somehow, in the midst of this miraculous pace at which the world moves, time seems to pause for a whole section of society - where everyday still seems a misery, where medical help seems more of a dream than a reality and even a daily meal questionable. 

What matters more than ever today, in an ever-changing fast-paced technologically forward world, is spreading the word - reminding people that though your phone can talk to you and tell you who’s calling, there remains a larger section of humanity whose voices aren’t heard.  People who need help to sit up and eat, people who feel like they have no reason to keep living, people who are abandoned and alone. 

Let’s teach our children to reach out to those less fortunate – to care for those who are alone, to feed those with no food and clothe those with no clothes. 

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