The Ashoka Tree Blog

There’s much to be said about a head of state visiting a first-world country in the headlines of every newspaper/television channel.   However, pretty much nothing remains said about the millions left in the country for whom basic amenities are still such a rarity that they couldn’t care less if a leading software company has decided to provide laptops for youth in their village.   Chances are they’d rather sell these laptops for a month’s worth of rations or to pay off outstanding debts instead. Here’s the thing – while it’s easy to promote your social cause by talking about the numerous computers you are providing a certain village, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that village actually needed consistent electricity to use those computers in the first place.   Figuring out what you want to donate is easy enough, but finding the people who actually need it takes a little more.   Organizing a ‘run for life’ walkathon sounds fantastic – but really who...

The Ashoka Tree had our first donation drive this past weekend where we collected a whole load of clothes, books and sanitary pads for Father Tezza’s School in Wynad. Fr. Tezzas School is indeed a special school run for over 108 special children with various mental challenges up in the mountains in Wynad run by nuns.  What struck us as special is the story that Sr. Bincy, of Fr. Tezza's School, had to tell us of how they wake up some days with no rice to feed their children (they need approximately 16 kgs of rice a day) and pray about it - to find that, miraculously, they have somebody who comes up with a donation of a sack or two of rice by afternoon.  It's stories like these that inspire us to work harder to make life just that little bit easier for these children. While it was lovely people contributed, what made the occasion even more special was the number of other  children from the apartment complex  who came over that Saturday morning to help us sor...

If there’s one thing we, at The Ashoka Tree, know for a fact about donating - it’s that donating is something that doesn’t actually take much more than a single second’s worth of decision to decide you want to give somebody something.   Whether something as small as the cup of coffee you’ve got in your hand when you see somebody on the street who’d probably benefit more from that warm cuppa or a part of your salary that could probably get a couple of children desks to write on at school.   The very act of giving warms corners of your heart you otherwise could never have known exist.   It’s a feeling of knowing you can think of people other than yourself, a feeling of knowing there’s somebody out there who needs love much more than you do.   It’s the feeling of being able to share some of your love – being able to spread a smile.   It’s just a simple thought – and that’s all that counts. The whole concept of “donating” tends to get blown out of proporti...

Here ’ s the thing – children outgrow stuff, almost faster than you can buy them – getting rid of stuff is never as quick as you accumulate.   What doesn ’ t occur to most people (mainly the ones who can actually read this) is that there ’ s a huge, huge portion of humanity in our country alone who have none of the comforts or the ease of living that is prevalent in middle-class India today. The Ashoka Tree, however, exists purely because of this – the ever-widening gap between those of us who ‘ have ’ clothes, books and toys and those who ‘ have-not ’ .   At The Ashoka Tree, we connect two sides of the multifaceted Indian community to ensure that people who have ‘ more than enough ’ are willing to donate for others can reach a stage where they could actually ‘ have enough ’ .   We want to connect people who want to help, with those who really need it. What we really do, is collect donations of ‘ gently-used ’ or unused clothes, books and toys and distribu...

For some children, going to school is much more than just education.   This is about the free meals that fill empty stomachs their mothers could not feed that morning.   This is about having a uniform that doubles up as the only good set of clothes they own.   This is about escaping the druggery and pain that accompanies living below the poverty line to a place where there is food to eat and there are games to play – a place where you don ’ t need to be older than you actually are. Parents of these children aren ’ t exploiting the system of education that (barely) exists in most parts of India, but actually use this as a means to continue living – a means for food they cannot otherwise provide, clothes they cannot afford and often times shelter they otherwise do not have. With the average daily-wage laborer (who makes up most of the Indian economy) unable to provide for a family that seems to grow faster than India ’ s GDP, options for daily living seem to d...