Thursday, February 26, 2009

me:
Where are the keys to His massive barracks,
Which filled itself,when you filled them out,
Where each grain taken meant another added,
Some where in the depths of every heart,
Are those keys of gold locked in from inside
`
Gone are the days when man neither sowed nor reaped
But had plenty to share,for he never hoarded,
The times are now,when the barracks are shut
Open doors,your eyes and your hearts,see;
Those gripping to their groaning stomachs,
Save their souls ,now or never
A fist of rice, food for all

Neeraja :)

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

A Tonne of Rice

The Goa Chapter of FOR was started in August 2008 with just two volunteers (Prakash and me). . Since then it has come a long way..... 7 months have passed and with time we have grown.... and multiplied into a team of more than 15 volunteers.

On 21st Feb 2009, 7 months since its inception, FOR creates history by collecting and distributing 1 tonne of rice grains among the needy.

Details of the various collections:

No.

Name of organisation

Quantity(kg)

1.

Kiran Niketan, Birla

44.15

2.

MES Higher Secondary School, Zuarinagar

92.85

3.

MES College of Arts and Commerce, Zuarinagar

191.00

4.

Government High School, Mangoor Hill

50.00

5.

Navy Children School, Chicalim

215.00

6.

Kendriya Vidyalaya No.1, Vasco-da-gama

279.00

7.

Kendriya Vidyalaya No.2, Vasco-da-gama

127.00

Total:

999kg


The collected grains were distributed to three institutions:

  1. Our Home - Bogmalo
  2. Love India Charitable Trust, Sancoale
  3. Boys Orphanage, Agassaim

All the operations of Fist Of Rice would not have been possible without the dedication and commitment of the Fist Of Rice Goa Chapter team which has worked tirelessly to build such a commendable network of donors in so short a time.

Cheers guys !!!


Saturday, February 7, 2009

On the wings of poesy

Fist Of Rice

It's not easy for all,
I mean the life.
Just to keep one alive,
there is an endless strife.

We, the privileged ones
choose to ignore.
They don't get the least;
and we fight for more.

They don't want a lot,
a helping gesture will suffice.
It's not such a heavy price;
Just spare a "fist of rice".

- Chaitanya Parashar

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

You know what...my previous post looks like a chicken without feathers...a mouse without whiskers....a Flog without the "F"...a BoR without the B...and I didn't find any apologies in my mailbox today...ahem, moderator!

Posting the Poster

Dipin and I have been trying to post this post about the poster for the last half an hour (Oh! What an "excellent" connection). First, Blogger loads an interface without the "Add Image" button; then it loads only the title and finally it doesn't load at all! So - How did it get posted? College Internet connections have a way of paying you back for the patient effort you put in(staring at incomplete Firefox screens of course!).
Here's the post in Dipin's words (his computer has passed into the Heavenly Realms trying the impossible :P)

"Cheers guys...
Days of toil and creative brainstorming (anticipated hype :)) has finally given shape to the much awaited and much-required "FOR poster"...

Thanks to Megharaj Sagar -the creative designer of the poster- for his masterpiece..
Now that enough of vote of thanks has been carried out...

We need possible suggestions and modifications to improve its contents and appearance.All kinds of constructive comments are welcome.


This is just the initial version of the poster. With all your inputs lets make the poster more inviting and eye-catchy!

Dipin"

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

A blog for FoR

And so we are here...finally, a flog for BoR (you know what I mean). When I was invited here, my first thoughts were "someone thinks I write well enough to invite me to their blog..wow! I must be good" (yes, self-centered and no, humility is perhaps, not my best quality)...and then of course, I logged in (don't you find that google owns almost everything on cyber-world..and if it isn't something they own, they soon own it? Call me paranoid, but you'll think of me one day when the google guys come-up with that mind control software that will be end of humanity as we know it).
Anyway, sorry for digressing, I logged in and I find I'm the first one here but my guess is there are more of you are going to log and blog soon.
I think this is a great opportunity to write about FoR but we need to have an idea of allowable content so I and other normal human-beings like me, know if we have to leave paranoid thoughts & jokes aside and work on the serious stuff...
Hope to hear from ya'll soon!
(Note to moderator: you are free to remove this post if the content is inappropriate - you can apologise later)

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Change the world!

I was going through random blog search results when I came across this picture which illustrates FOR's principles.


I have been studying engineering for the past three years; and the joy and relief(phew!) that comes when we see that a difficult physical phenomenon is governed by a simple linear equation - that's an engineering pleasure!











(Click for a larger view)
Source: http://northlandposter.com/img/p538.jpg

The First Steps

This is the first post. This blog will have just about everything about FOR.

What’s my earliest recollection about FOR?

It all started off on a bright morning while i was chatting with my school friend (Neeraja).It was nice conversation; as most conversations are. Suddenly, she buzzed me with this idea of starting an NGO called Fist Of Rice. Instantly, whole volumes of information on how to start and run an NGO came to me. Intuitively, I knew that I was destined to be a part of the revolutionary step. This was the missing piece in the big jigsaw of my experiences. Oh, what a moment! No, I am joking: P

I was just getting to know her virtually -we lived in different continents of the same school.- Long hours of chat, soon I was running short of words against her constant prattle. After all that seconds of googling in my cerebrum, I did not have many search results. Sensing our common inclination to matters of social concern, I decided to forward into the chat space, on a casual note, my not so casual dream of fighting for the hungry. Incidentally -there are no accidents in life- she had the fuel (in crude form) for my dream. An IDEA!
Hunger was one topic that does not exhaust me (or my amazing FOR friends); and we worked more on the idea. When two people share a dream it is beautiful but when more do it is a miracle. The idea was passed through several filters, refined and charted. More e-mails, more chats, my friends Dipin, Gurumoorthy, MSR (to mention a few) involved themselves in the initial perception.

Here's an extract from the initial mail:

"Yesterday while talking to a school friend I came across an idea that seems good.

Consider a well to do school, on a premeditated day.
Each kid brings 1 fistful of rice (nothing compared to what we waste) to school and puts it in a common storage barrel. At the end of the day we have a barrel overflowing with rice(hopefully)
Imagine if all the kids across the country did it on various days of the month and we had an efficient system to mobilise the grain

Essentially we collect the grain,

find a place to cook it, (an orphanage to begin with),
and distribute it to the hungry..

Since it brings about a sense of moral and social responsibility in students...earning the support of teachers and parents would not be of much concern."

So, those were pretty much the earliest days of FOR. We watched the system work, helped it to place its first footsteps, four months have passed, it can do much more than a four month old baby, it can run!