Lending a helping hand

It was an Allari Naresh film, Sangharshana, that gave birth to Helping Hands Humanity (HHH), a city-based NGO founded by Chandra Satish, an aspiring filmmaker and an assistant director in Tollywood. Inspired by the message of the film, he started off in 2012, by attempting to bring to light how compassion can change things, via a documentary titled Humanity. Soon, the attempt grew, and  led to many beggars who were mentally unstable reform their lives and several children get educated.

“For that documentary, we spotted a person in Ameerpet and decided to help him out. So, we cleaned him up at a Sulabh complex. We realised this wasn’t going to be easy during our attempts to admit him at the Erragadda hospital for the mentally challenged. We had to obtain a certificate from the police and the court. While all that seemed complicated, it familiarised us with the legalities which are mandatory to start off any kind of service,” says Satish.

Chandra Satish, founder, HHH

“I decided to start with education. After spending over a year with people at slums across the city, I gained their trust and got them to enroll in government schools. Soon, a teaching mission began where the students were sent to private schools and volunteers took tuitions.”

The organisation also works towards employment of women. Recently, 28 women from the slums were enrolled as trainees at a textile firm in the outskirts of Hyderabad.

Meanwhile, HHH’s Donate a Book campaign has also proved to be a success as they have set up libraries across three government school libraries. Satish is most proud of the home they have set up in Attapur for the kids, where he also lives. “We started it this year with 17 kids, ranging from the age of five to 18. They all have their own homes but the advantage of being here is that they can study in peace, as we help them. They’re all doing very well. From the next academic year, we will have 22 kids from Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada,” he says.

We ask him how he has been able to gather funds without asking people, and Satish simply says, “I think when you want to do good, you don’t have to ask. Things just fall into place. We have managed to gain people’s trust by being transparent, especially about the funds they give us — there’s an online record of every rupee credited or debited. The donors and volunteers are our lifeline and without them, there’s nothing we could have achieved,”  he says humbly. Satish and the other volunteers can be contacted on the organisation’s Facebook page.