Promote DYPC, Win Google Wave invites!

Still waiting for that elusive (and exclusive!) invite for Google Wave. Here is your chance to win it and trust me it doesn’t get any easier! All you need to do is help DYPC in spreading the word about this concept of PC donation and the site itself.

All set? Become a fan of DYPC on Facebook, follow us on Twitter (@dypc) AND do atleast any one set of the following (the more you can do the better !):

1) On facebook: Invite others, put DYPC URL in your status, become a fan of DYPC on facebook.

DYPC Website : www.DonateYourPC.in
DYPC Facebook URL : http://tinyurl.com/dypcOnFB

2) Blogs: Put a DYPC badge on your blog or blog about DYPC (psst. here is a cheat code, you can just cross post this one)

DYPC Blog : http://donateyourpc.wordpress.com
DYPC Badges : http://donateyourpc.in/web/resources.jsp

Put in simpler words to be eligible you have to become DYPC fan on FB and then either do the activities related to Facebook or Blogs. Just don’t forget to mail us (contact(at)donateyourpc(dot)in) about what all you did!

There are 15 invites to be won, make sure you are one of the winners!

Help Flood Victims in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

If you are willing to help victims of the floods that affected Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Please see the information below:

Donate Dry ration, Utility items, Clothing, etc. Pls contact Priyanka(9986043080) or Vivek(9845080313) or send an email to sahayata@pankhudifoundation.org to donate or fill this form: http://tiny.cc/vcFMa

Donate whatever you can to help the people in distress !

A little caution…

“Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipients to liberate themselves of it.”

I read the line in last week’s Sunday Times and realized how many times we completely ignore this fact. Charity should be a collaborative effort by both the donor and the receiver to achieve their goals. It’s important to make sure that we enable the recipient to achieve their goals themselves instead of us go carrying them around and crippling them more. For example CRY foundation to help the poor in the far corners of Gujarat collaborated with two local NGOS. They trained the landless folks and help them become more aware of their rights and imparted them the required knowledge to exercise them. These landless people have now reclaimed more than 400 acres of land and collectively share them to grow crops. They were able to acquire for themselves better transportation, medical facilities and schools for children from the local government. They have even created people groups to tackle the coal mafia. This turned out to be a sustainable process only because CRY and the local NGOs collaborated with the locals to help them make their own lives better.

This is where DYPC also hit the bulls’ eye. DYPC plays a vital role in enabling interested NGOs to impart computer education to the less fortunate. Also due to relative scarcity of donations DYPC has a strict screening process where the receiving NGO has to give a proper plan of how they intend to utilize the PCs donated to them. This ensures that only the ones who have the sustainable long term plan of helping people get the PCs. The NGOs in turn help people to gain skills which will help them significantly in getting a decent job.

Any form of charity is noble but one should make sure that they are not making beggars out of completely able people instead of showing them how to lead a better life on their own.

To read more about the CRY Foundation’s initiative in Gujarat I mentioned above use the following link:

http://www.cry.org/resources/photoessay/kutch/pessay.html

DYPC on Radio Active Community Radio 90.4

Radio Active - Community Radio

Also cross-posted on Amit’s blog.

One of the volunteer’s at DYPC, Aman Jain presented us with a nice opportunity to talk about DYPC on Radio. Aman is dynamic youngster, apart from his day job and his social initiative The Zav Foundation, he is also a RJ at the Community Radio station called Radio Active. It is being run by the Jain Group Of Institutions in Bangalore and has a impressive listener base. Aman is hosting a program series called “Youth in Action” and he offered to cover DYPC as one of the youth initiatives. The show is a bilingual and targeted at both english and kannada speaking audience. So, we had to find one person who would be able to field questions in Kannada. So, I roped in Jayashree (my wife) to be the one to speak in Kannada.

On Saturday morning (26th Sept) me and Jayashree along with our 18month old daughter Gargi started off at around 7:45 am to be at the recording studio in the Jain University Centre for Management Studies. Aman was already there waiting for us. He showed us the studio and also explained us about the show he was hosting and the motivation for having a community radio station. We also met Ramya, who manages the recording studio.

The recording took around half an hour and Gargi had a nice time looking around the radio studio and was very co-operative not to disturb us.

Meeting Aman was a nice experience. We discussed a lot about the good work he is doing as part of the The Zav Foundation and how we could help each other.

The show will be telecast after 15th October. Will update with the exact time and date once I hear back from Aman.

DonateYourPC and The Joy of Giving week

DonateYourPC is registered as a Joy Of Giving Week idea. See this for more details.

So come donate your old PC and PC peripherals and help people learn using them.

Celebrating the festive spirit

This is that wonderful period of the year when air around is full of festive spirit. so beginning with belated wishes for Id, on behalf of DYPC I wish everyone a very happy Dusshehra, Durga Puja and Navratri and all other festivals all around the country.

However, this year a new week long festival has been added to our calendar: The Joy Of Giving Week. A festival where we celebrate the spirit of sharing.

At DYPC, this spirit itself is our sole. Each time when someone donates his/her old hardware to be put to a better use, he/she sets an example for others to follow. I know that we have a lot to achieve, many more PCs to be donated but we have made a beginning and I am sure that just like the festive spirit our spirit of giving will soar too!

Beginning once more!

This post comes after such a long hiatus that there is no other option except being honest: this blog has not been active and we have been guilty of ignoring it!

But as we start the process of rejuvenating DYPC, this blog will defintely see better days.

A bit of recognition!

Emails go a long way and so do the email signatures. Jayakumar of MyBangalore.com came to know of DYPC from the email signature of Amit. He desired to do a writeup about us and mailed a list of questions, which Amit and I responded.

The fun part was a ‘photo-session’ which had to feature Amit and me. Since I could not join due to obvious reason (I live in Hyderabad, not Bangalore) I suggested Amit stars in it solely. Amit decided to pull Vaibhav who decided to pull Subrata. Actually all Bangalore volunteers were invited but it being on a weekday not everyone could come. And to top it all, Amit had to pull out since his parents were visiting him the same day.

The photosession happened but by then the story was already published with a snapshot of the site! I must admit that I liked the site snapshot there but a couple of cheerful volunteers too would have looked good.

Anyways, I believe this article will spread the word about us and get us some more donations which we badly need. Thanks to Jayakumar, Amit and all other volunteers who took out the time for the ‘photosession’.

You can read the story here: http://mybangalore.com/article/donate-your-pc.html

Activism – Earth Hour 2009

At DYPC are we only about redistributing computers or do we take a world view? Well, its a mix of this and that. Tomorrow is Earth Hour 2009, and we strongly believe in this movement which started two years ago in Sydney.

At 8.30 PM local time (yes, 8.30 PM in your part of the world) please switch off all lights for an hour! 

So What is this Earth Hour anyways? Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. In 2008 the message had grown into a global sustainability movement, with 50 million people switching off their lights. It is our vote for Global Warming and how critical it is for us to be active and give it the right attention it deserves.

This year India joins the Earth Hour and hopes to contribute towards the goal of 1 billion people supporting it.

Do visit http://www.earthhour.in

Don’t forget to switch off your lights at 8.30 PM on 28th March 2009 for an hour.

Extending the reach

These days the hot discussion at DYPC is how to reach the nook and corner of the country from where the requests for hardware are coming. Long back it was Tirunelveli, then Faizabad and more recently Vizianagram.

Undoubtedly our initial plan of having volunteers in the city to facilitate a transfer can’t work and it is quite heart-breaking to refuse someone who has expressed faith in us. The only solution is to start sending the PC from source to destination, wherever they may be. Of-course nearest places will be chosen.

There are quite a few challenges involved. Cost being just one of them (and since at DYPC we don’t make any money, it is THE problem!), security and safety of the hardware being others. Obviously requester will be asked to pay the shipping charges. I just hope this doesn’t turn them off.

One plan is to collaborate with courier companies who give us discounts for carrying the hardware, as part of their CSR activities. Another idea is to get in touch with transporters who are making daily trips to requester’s city and ask requester to pick the stuff from them. Again this is easier said than done, but of-course no harm in trying!

If you think you can help us in solving this in any way, please please please contact us!