We still had three full blocks to cover and it was already Tuesday.
“We’ll do it for the whole of Passbal “ I had said, seeing the eagerness of my team and already getting the feeling that we might just me able to pull this one off too. They had quickly huddled into an un-booked meeting rooms , after Jacob shared the brilliant idea with me I had to share it with my team.
“Hey Kris, we are thinking about gifting the housekeeping staff on the occasion of Christmas and New Year with a gift. We are doing this for our building; can you help in collecting money for this from your team and help us?”
“Sure Jacob! “ I had readily agreed, later when it struck me that he had planned this initiative for the house keeping staff of only one building of the four buildings that housed the workforce of Passbal. It occured to me that remaining housekeeping staff might feel left out if we dint gift them too.
That’s when i took it up “We’ll do it for the whole of Passbal “.
The next few days flew in sending mails across teams in Passbal , finding volunteers and then going for a floor to floor campaign. The housekeeping and pantry staff was the silent force that helped us keep the cleanliness, washing coffee mugs, maintaining the restrooms etc, giving them a gift; a token a love to start the new years with a smile sounded brilliant when I heard it.We dived head first to make this dream come true.
“A pant piece and shirt piece for male housekeeping staff and Saree for female housekeeping staff” rang the message. The mails and the campaigns did generate a good response, there were even teams that stood up and applauded as we went about the campaign.
The IT workforce is really a mixed bag, it was a real enriching experience to notice how differently people reacted and responded to the same message. The expressions on the faces, the body language of the colleagues …
As soon tapped them or caught their attention and said “ Excuse me , Sorry to disturb you , could you please give us two minutes for your time for a short announcement we need to make, Thank you ”
The Magic would start, first the face which was totally into grim looking straight into a computer screen would suddenly become blank, and then the element of curiosity would dawn on them.
“Who the hell is this? What do they want? What announcement?” We could see all these questions run amuck in their minds .Then the rise of their inquisitive eyebrows and slightly open mouth would signal that they were ready for us to proceed.
Some would stand up, some would just bend backwards from their seats, some would already be contemplating how to discuss this with their colleagues as soon as we are done, some thinking they might just be able to find the topic of the coffee break discussion.
Once we were done with the announcements, we requested someone in the audience to help collect the money from that small group and hand it over to us.
Delivering the message was easy and I loved doing it as each time I did it, I grew more and more passionate about the cause. The response was also triggering us to go beyond our capacity. We had close to 33 floors to cover, each floor would require close to 7-10 announcements, a need for close to 250 to 300 such announcements. Don’t ask how we managed that.
Then came the “the” challenge, I had imagined that the campaigning, rounding up of volunteers, keeping track of the inflow of money and making the process transparent would be the challenge. Or achieving the target of 50,000 Rs required to gift the 170 housekeeping staff would be tough, but the challenge we faced was bigger and more lethal.
It was handling the contributors and their suggestions.
“Why don’t we give branded clocks?”
“How about giving them gift coupons?”
”Blankets?”
“You can buy clothes from Tiupur “;
“I know this person in so and so garment company; we should take it from there”
“Why don’t we include security personnel as well?”
“Hey Steel utensils would be more useful for them, isn’t it”;
The list went on, we the three to four initiators of this campaign knew that someone somewhere is bound to be hurt that his/her idea has not been implemented. Every suggestion came with a good intention, a person or group wanting to make a difference, or use this platform for the best possible use. We realized that it was almost impossible to implement everyone’s suggestion or to make everyone happy. The irony was we set out to make everyone smile with this initiative.
We had set aside five days for the collecting the money and campaigning. It was morning of Day 4 and we had only achieved 27,000 Rs and almost half of money yet to come in. We just had a day left.
“Ho Jayega Na, Aaj already Thursday Hai?” ringed Divya’s voice.
“Hmm, Hahn Hahn, Ho Jayega Friday Tak time Hai Na !” I reassured her not letting her notice that, the ‘use in case of emergency glass’ was broken and switch to activate turbo mode of my system was pressed. Time to boost up had come.
That’s when we started out to campaign more aggressively. Most of the volunteers were a moving crowd; some would turn up on Day 1 and go missing the rest of the days. But the good thing was someone new would turn up on Day 2. We did manage to complete the campaign in the remaining floors on time. It was a very heartwarming feeling to have wished so many strangers a very Happy New Year and having to spread this feel good campaign.
Day 4 Afternoon,
Like a Miracle, two volunteers turned up with 13,000 Rs collected from their floor, Then came another 7,000 Rs , then a 4,500 Rs, then 10,000 Rs… and it was barely two hours from the time Divya had said we just have 27,000 Rs !. We started dancing around when we saw the figure in the collection excel cross 50,000 Rs!!
The whole volunteer team was happy that now the dream would be a certain reality.
By end of Day 4 we had made 80,000 Rs.
We all had a good night’s sleep as whatever collections due to come to next day was only an excess.
Then came new suggestions, my email inbox was just flooded. The money contributions were racing with the number of suggestions…both were way beyond our expectation.
“We can use the extra money for donating to education of poor kids!”
“We can also give cash along with the clothes!”
“We must save the rest of the pooled money to gift them next year as well!”
“We can donate the money for electrification of rural parts of our state!”
“Now we can also give sweets along with the clothes!”
We could hardly hold our breath as we crossed Rs.1 Lakh during morning half of Day 5. We had achieved double the money we wanted to collection. We were just delighted. The old ideas kept rolling in to with slight re-packaging...
“Why don’t we give branded watches?”
“How about giving them gift coupons?”
”Imported Blankets?”
Plato seemed to have figured this out long back when he quoted:
“Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.”
The volunteer team quickly huddled up, unable to take in all this sudden inflow, of money, of suggestions, of emails, of calls from teams who had pooled in money, we were short of time and people to retrieve the collected money. We had to also diligently update our collection excel and consolidate it. Counting hard cash and handling that was also something none of us were used to.
Day 5 Evening.
We couldn’t control our excitement as we were about to reach 2 Lakh Rs!! We eagerly took photos of the colleague who handed over the 100 Rs that would make the collections tip over to 2 Lakh. The response from the employees of Passbal was truly overwhelming .We, the core volunteers were in a state of mind which we had never experienced before, a heady cocktail of happiness, blankness and awe, our bonding was getting stronger each second.
We had to quickly decide on the vendor as on Day 6 we had to go and purchase the clothes. We got many contacts, many ideas from the volunteers and contributors. We decided to first execute our initial plan to gifting the clothes to the housekeeping staff and later think what to do with the rest of the money.
Now figuring out if it was good quality was the latest challenge, we desperately tried to find reliable contacts. Each had their own suggestions where to buy from and what to look out for. How would we figure out the quality? Now we could afford good quality clothes but wanted to make sure we also don’t get duped. The words Fabric, Quality, Colour, Texture and Brand were doing a ringa-ringa-roses around our heads now.
That’s when my mom called me
“Listen, Can you meet this girl whose alliance we had received last week, she is in Bangalore for a short while?”
“Mom, I might be busy in the weekend have to go to Chikpet or somewhere to buy clothes , I told you before… ”
“Your uncle and cousins, liked her profile, you liked her photos as well …”
“Ya ya, ..What does she do? I forgot…”
“She has done her degree in textile engineering….from,,,”
I dint understand a word after textile engineering.
*Smiles*
