Shalini Kapoor, Founder and President of Yatan talks about social causes

Strength isn’t about how much you can handle before your break. It’s about how much you can endure after you’re been broken.

Shalini Kapoor

To all those who know Shalini Kapoor she needs no introduction. But for those who don’t, we suggest the readers take a pause from reading this article and visit the website of Yatan.

Question 1 – How did you choose the various campaigns conducted by Yatan?

Answer – To begin with it was just a single venture and we began which I felt was the need to the hour, education. After that is was much of of one thing leading to another.

Keeping the guiding principle of Education being a right, we began with five children of migrant workers. Today we have crossed more than 10000 children. This venture is our Back to school drive, Vidhya Vinayam. While talking classes the next issue dawned upon us, menstrual hygiene. We began with classes focusing on informing young women on how to select the right product and what are the issues faced. For this we requested volunteers like gynaecologists and health experts.

While these ventures were progressing, COVID struck and the entire world came to stand still due to the lockdown. With migrant workers and labourers getting jobless, food became the most important essential taking priority over education. That is the time we began with our next venture, Annapurna (Food Bank). We started providing wholesome meals to underprivileged children. We also started distributing rations and all essentials for cooking once we started getting donations from some really beautiful souls. During COVID we also began our next venture which is Sampurna. We realised that not everyone can afford digital devices, so we started asking people to donate their old and used digital devices so they can be further provided to the needy.

While the lockdown eased, we realised that in order to help with income, the female members of the family now require the necessary skills. That was our next venture, Protsahan. This time we also got volunteers who spared their valuable time in teaching skills to women who started with environmentally friendly products. Temple flowers were used to create organic colours and cow dung was used to make diyas. Women also learned stitching and other such skills.

Volunteers form a part of our core and have helped us to grow to this level. We conduct classes on legal awareness, career options and even counselling sessions. One such session was also conducted by Manisha Yadav, Founder and Owner of Narisakti.

On World Environmental Day we planted 500 trees. As part of our Blanket donation drive we provided 50000 blankets to homeless people who sleep by the roadside.

Question 2 – Patience and compassion are key ingredients of social work? Are these essential or critical?

Answer – Dalai Lama once said “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” Without compassion you cannot help others. Social service requires time and hard work. Everything however begins with patience. So compassion and patience are the criticals while a lot of hard work is required.

The other important aspect of patience is that this is the only virtue which will see you through. When things are not going your way, it is patience which provides the answers.

Question 3 – Talking about generation gap, does the Generation – Z show any interest in social work?

While the millennials are touching their forties, they are still struggling with technology and gadgets. For example people from that generation prefer to call rather than chat. But in case of generation Z who have been brought up being connected, they have taken full advantage of access to online resources.

These are all young men and women who are socially conscious and digitally aware. Young women especially are much aware about work and financials. So my opinion is that generation Z is better prepared and ready for social work.

We are so fortunate to have these young minds working as volunteers. Also social work is now included in university curriculum. That is a big step since field work is now compulsory. So these students put in lots of hard work to get good grades as volunteers. We have got volunteers from prestigious institutes like DPS Vasant Kunj, DPS RK Puram, DPS Gurugram, DPS Sushantlok, Shri Ram School, Pathways school, Suncity, Amity International School, La Martinière School Lucknow, DPS Bokaro Steelcity, Amity University Noida, IBM College Gurugram, NCU University Gurugram, Manipal University Jaipur, Christ University Bangalore, Narsee Monjee Mumbai, Narsee Monjee Bangalore, Flame University Pune, IGNOU and Lucknow University.

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