Waiting for the IPL to start?
It’s already going on!
confused?
IPL is the season of change and brings people together.
Indeed, it “impacts people’s lives.”
Our own version of IPL has broken all the records.
Curious about what I am talking about? Have a look then.
Our partnership with our user groups has left behind Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers’ partnership.
With Ganga Di and Ayesha Di bringing awareness about menstrual hygiene in their community and around, making sanitary napkins available to the women there; the user group in Arpan transforming the journey for thousands of flowers from our holy rivers to the flower based incense sticks and the potters in Rivaayat gaining respect and recognition while they mold the future for traditional Indian Handicrafts, the partnership has been unbreakable!
The bar is set high now!
While in the BCCI’s IPL, 8 teams compete vigorously to defeat each other, our motive is to uplift the downtrodden lives.
Unlike the cricket IPL teams, the projects of Connecting Dreams Foundation work day and night without any sense of competitiveness and this is our main strength and motivation. We all work towards the same goal and there is not one, but many winners.
IPL is not just about the matches, it’s more of a feeling. However, over the past few years, some people have gone overboard while following this passion and have been swayed by some practices such as gambling unaware of its dreadful consequences and the long term impact that a moment of addiction can create. It creates a conducive environment for their children to study and the money lost in bets compels women to cut down their necessities.
I still remember the day when Saheb, a 13-year-old factory worker, trudging in the burning sunlight was keeping wood logs from one corner to another. A weak body with a pale face bowed down from the baggage of poverty. The irony is Saheb- which means the master couldn’t even be his own master. In utter dismay, I moved up to him wondering of the ugly faces that life shows to oneself. On being asked the reason for his plight, the answer offered was beyond the understanding of people like us who haven’t faced the harsh realities of life. Being the only son in his family, he was slogging his daylight hours just to stop his family from being defamed. His father had lost all the money in betting which was kept aside for his sister’s marriage. How morally justified is this?
The day people start believing that no reason justifies child labor is the day when the real change will come. The boy whom we call ‘Chotu’ in any Dhaba is the eldest son of his family. No one can be bigger than this Chotu who works all day long just to make his family’s ends meet.
The joy that hitting a century sway among the spectators is worth watching. The cheering and the broad glittering smiles on the faces are treasures. We are after 100s too. We are after 100% availability of menstrual hygiene products and be a big hit towards creating awareness and change in the lives of women.
The revolutionary journey of the cricketers and how they have left a mark in the field is inspiring to us all. We are here to change the course of the flowers and make it revolutionary too by upcycling it into products that are loved by all but do not leave any mark of waste behind!
All of us are mesmerized by the glittering IPL trophy, right? Our potters are also mesmerized by something but that isn’t the trophy, that is their wheel, the wheel that helps them keep the art of pottery alive in India, the wheel that is their passion and their source of livelihood.
Our version of IPL is a permanent one, it’s not a one month journey though it does have the same amount of thrill, passion, and vigor that one sees on their screens. This is a match of creating everlasting impact and winning the hearts of people. This is IPL – Impacting people’s lives.
-Kanishka, Deepika, Shrest