Help create a Billion Literates!

Life as we knew it has changed in the last few months. We see and hear of death and destruction of lives and livelihoods all around the world. Society has been trying to adjust to the seismic tremors it is being subjected to on a daily basis. And yet through all the suffering and despair, we have witnessed the most sublime in humans at unprecedented levels. Where Authority has failed, civil society has stepped in. Where prejudices were rampant, individuals have healed with a helping hand. Barriers of race, religion, colour, caste, social status are being broken by ordinary, simple beings, who just have the courage and the humanity to show they care! These truly are the best of times and the worst of times!

OBLF is proud of our small team of 4 courageous men – led from the front by our CEO Anish and Program Manager Mahesh – which for the last 9 weeks has daily braved the elements, the harsh terrain, the physical strain and the emotional and mental agony of witnessing extreme human suffering first hand. The team has been very ably supported by some of our rural Coordinators, who have the local knowledge of “needy pockets of population”, so that our relief reaches genuine beneficiaries. The local administration and police have also helped us identify remote areas which have been left behind.

Our team has traversed 3,700+ kms, into remote areas where no official or civil society has gone, distributed over 50 MTs of dry rations, to migrants and waste pickers, gypsies and even low income groups who are too shy to ask for help. We have handed out 15,000+ masks, 3,000+ sanitizers to front line workers, and even 200 PPEs to a government hospital, which was short on those! We’ve distributed Milk powder and fresh vegetables to a colony of migrant waste pickers who live in conditions not fit for man or beast. Our team has reached settlements in remote areas, in forests, on hill tops, and has kept in touch with them to replenish stocks when they are over. We have directly or indirectly touched about 33,000 lives!

A colony of migrant workers held a “thanksgiving & blessings” function for our helping heroes. A frontline worker, with tears in her eyes, had this to say “So far, in the last 12 weeks, we have been given just half a litre of hand sanitizer and one disposable mask – this, despite us having to go daily, for several hours, into unpredictable situations. Your team is the first to have come to this location, engaged in a conversation with us and armed us with good, reusable masks and hand sanitizers for our own protection”.

The heartening part is that in each of these colonies / settlements / groups, we find noble souls, natural leaders, who take upon themselves to organize their group, who help us in our distribution, who ensure that the distribution is equitable, smooth and with minimum hassle. And though life is limping back to normal – slowly – there is still a demand for rations, since the recovery to normalcy is painfully slow. We will continue to lend a helping hand to those in need. 

In the meantime, our team noticed that in many rural areas where we operate, there was not much awareness of the precautions to be taken to stop the spread of Covid. We have therefore started an awareness campaign for the same, with lectures, posters, demonstrations on hygiene etc. Our team is now being invited on a daily basis by various Panchayats (local rural bodies) to run this campaign in their villages, so that the spread is minimised.

Needless to say, we could never have achieved this without the generosity of all of you, our generous donors! We will be ever grateful to you for your care, concern and generosity. We can only assure you that we will strive our best and continue to help those in need.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. And though  we at OBLF will continue to serve our under-privileged children in a meaningful way, we also want to bring fresh ideas, innovative methods, and creative thinking in the way we do it. Starting this month, Anish Ramachandran is the CEO of OBLF. Over the past 10 months Anish has already been working with us on multiple fronts and  brings with him tons of leadership experience, fresh approach, and a passion for the cause. He is a former Vice-President of Intel Corporation. Prior to his retirement from the corporate sector, he was VP and Director of Intel's Greater Asia Region operations, and worked at Intel in various leadership roles for over eighteen years. Prior to Intel, Anish was with Novell Inc. for close to seven years and before that with a couple of other companies. Anish is a Post Graduate alumnus of XLRI, Jamshedpur and a graduate in Commerce from Madras University. We are sure that under his leadership, OBLF will reach new levels of service.

Also, our 9^th academic year came to a close at the end of February 2020. Our Year-end Assessments – Oral and Written – were held from 17^th to 26^th February, 2020 for each of our about 4500 children.  More than 30 of our rural Coordinators, along with our 8 Supervisors and the Management team took a lot of effort to conduct these assessments in the remotest of schools, under the most trying conditions.

An analysis of the same shows that 99% of the children (who had at least 60 days’ attendance), improved in their English language skills.

The Assessment results show that 45% children scored over 60% marks at the year-end, as against less than 2% at the beginning of the year.

As against 45% of the OBLF children scoring > 60%, only 7% of Non-OBLF children scored >60%. This shows that OBLF’s Program on English language skills is indeed benefiting our rural children.