Stories of Hope | Friends come together for a cause

Hyderabad: Moved by the plight of several families which were devastated by the pandemic due to lack of resources to buy medicines and other necessary items, city-based Sanjay Reddy, along with his five close friends, started raising funds to help those who are in need. The group first raised Rs. 5,000 all by themselves and donated it to a person who was undergoing treatment for Covid-19.

“One of my friend’s friends and his wife passed away due to Covid19. They are survived by two kids (one 8-year-old and the other 9-year-old) but now the kids don’t have any immediate family. That is when I thought I should start helping people who cannot afford medicines or hospital bills,” Sanjay said.

“I then called my five close friends, who, like me, were willing to help people monetarily. We all collected Rs. 5,000. Our first help was to a woman named Bhaskaramma who was suffering from Covid-19 and had a huge amount of hospital bills to pay. Her husband and both her children had passed away. So, we took it upon ourselves to help her and we paid her hospital and pharmacy bills,” he added.

The initiative started by Sanjay has more than 50 volunteers working tirelessly. They have, till now, collected Rs. 7 lakh, apart from helping at least 25 families and four orphanages. Sanjay said that their help was not only to people suffering from Covid-19 but anyone who was in need.

When asked if their charity works were only Hyderabad-centric, Sanjay said, “Initially, we wanted to help people in Hyderabad so that we could verify the patients and do the needful. But recently, we helped two families from Vijayawada and one family residing in a village on the Telangana border after complete verification.”

Talking about the process of verification, Sanjay said the team collected medical reports, admission form of the patient, recent medical bills, outstanding bills, Aadhaar card and proof of relation of the person who contacted them to authenticate if the person was genuine or not.

“We also call up the hospital and verify if the patient’s admission number is in its records and if the patient admitted is genuinely in need of money,” he added.

Shilpa Nainani, a certified neuro-linguistic programming master practitioner and an anchor, and her husband Alay Razvi, an independent lawyer and founding partner of M/s Accord Juris LLP, joined the initiative recently.

Speaking about her journey and the reason behind contributing to this initiative, Shilpa said, “Sanjay’s friend Rajeev is my husband’s friend. When he told us about this initiative, we thought this could be our chance to help needy people and joined Sanjay in his noble work.”

She added that she was extremely glad that the whole initiative was transparent – where did the money go, who were the families which needed the money, what was their condition etc.

“Apart from monetary help, we also take care of the groceries for people who need them. Once we got a request from a pizza delivery executive, who, along with his wife, was down with Covid. So, we provided groceries to them,” Shilpa added.