Bengaluru, 03 May, 2023:
Milaap, India’s largest crowdfunding platform organised a baby blanket knitting drive in association with students from Acharya Bangalore Business School of Management in the city today. In an effort to build awareness around physical volunteering and the impact it can create, the initiative called, “ Spread warmth” is aimed at bridging the demand-supply gap for baby blankets in most government neonatal intensive care units. Over 15 students participated in the day-long event with cheering from their professors and the team at Milaap. The newly knit blankets will be handed over to the NICU department of Vani Vilas Women and Children’s Hospital, Bangalore.
Speaking on the occasion, Anoj Viswanathan, co-founder and President at Milaap, said, “It is one of the most fulfilling exercises to complete a project as intense and detail-oriented as knitting a blanket. It is even a better feeling when you know that they are being created to comfort someone as special and important as the NICU children, who are struggling in their own way, away from their mothers.“
He went on to add, “We are glad to have partners like Acharya Bangalore Business School of Management, St John’s Hospital and Vani Vilas Women and Children Hospital to help us spread the word on the importance of volunteering and how as a community we can do many effective projects together. A special shout out to all the students who participated today and spent their time in making this activity a success.”
The students at the ABBS college have invested a total of 32 hours spanning over 3 months for volunteering activities in association with Milaap, India’s first free crowdfunding platform. The foundation wing of the platform works closely with hospitals under their ‘Hospital Volunteering Program’ to get an in-depth perspective into the hospital ecosystem, understand the entailing challenges and bring about possible solutions. ABBS School of Management has a mandatory course on Campus to Community activities to build awareness about the grassroot issues of the society. Therefore it engages with organisations like Milaap to contribute back to society.
Dr. Santhosh Kumar G, Assistant Professor of ABBS School of Management, said, “Through the volunteering initiatives of Milaap, our students have been finding meaningful engagement opportunities over the past few months. Very recently, the students got hands-on experience working to helping in various departments of St. John’s Medical College and Hospital, Bangalore, and contributed to their day-to-day operations. It was a well-guided and novel initiative that helped our students add significant hours into community impact activities. Appreciate the efforts taken by Milaap and St. John’s Hospital towards enabling this for our students.” Prof. (Dr.) Madhumita Chatterji, Director at ABBS School of Management also joined the day-long activity.
The volunteering process and initiative was overlooked and guided by a trained professional Ms. Ratna Prabha Rajkumar, who is an expert in designing and sewing. She focuses on upcycling all kinds of leftover fabrics from tailoring units and used garments to save around 1500 kilograms of fabric waste from landfills every year.
Milaap has successfully rolled out the physical volunteering initiative with support from students of Masters of Social Work, from various colleges. Right from Out-patient-department to In-patient department, the volunteers are being trained for efficiently driving the designated ward activities. They have been able to engage in multiple hospitals in the same city and conduct various awareness programs for patients, like science fairs and puppetry sessions for paediatric patients. Milaap is looking to expand the volunteering community and make a larger impact through multiple personal engagements and making worthwhile differences in the lives of paediatric patients across cities.
