The yearender post

It is THAT time of the year.  Any news site/portal you visit has lists of year’s top 10 best/worst/beautiful/ugly/ordinary/special/amazing/boring/people/places/animals/aliens/predators… well you get the idea, don’t you.

How do we make a list of best things that happened to us this year? Because for some things to be counted as ‘best’, some other have to be counted as ‘good’ or ‘better’ or even ‘not-so-good’ or downright ‘bad’.  I won’t say that nothing went bad for us this year. Even the world’s highest roller-coaster has to go down to reach the record-making highs. A major corporate house promised us a donation and then backed out after we had collected huge requests. If that ain’t bad, I don’t know what is. But then it is not time to count our failures, or so I feel.  Ofcourse some of you will say that year-end is the time when we take stock of our achievements and how can that stock be correct if all the losses were ignored.

But then each time there is a donation offer it gives a high that drowns out any disappointments. And thanks to our kind donors, we have had so many offers this year. Atleast now when any one asks me ‘kaisa chal raha hai tumhara DYPC’ I have a 3 digit number to flaunt as our successful donations. If that’s not a high, trust me, I don’t know what is.

This year we started a new trend of giving certificates to our donors. ‘Friend Of The Earth’ certificate is a very small attempt to thank our donors. This apart from mentions on Facebook and Twitter, which you might say and even I agree ‘is not a big deal’ but then it is ‘cool’ to give the credit where it is due!

This year we had our biggest corporate donation, which came from British Airways.  We got mention in DNA Bangalore edition and CHIP magazine. Thank you very much guys. We need lots of donations and words of mouth (and print!) to expand and to succeed.

Last but not the least, we changed our identity after quite some time. And thankfully everyone liked it.

There are many thoughts, dreams that we are going to carry over to next year. Hopefully in 2013 we will see some new dreams and won’t have to carry over the ones from coming year!

Have a very good new year. Cheers.

Celebrating Earth Day: Keep symbolism in check!

Another ‘Earth Day’ just passed by.

As if exceptionally hot summer was not enough, this Earth Day came in the wake of eruption of an unpronounceable volcano. (Which in my opinion made news only because it put brakes on global aviation industry. I don’t remember reading too much about its impact on world climate though!)

Like all previous Earth Days, this too was dotted with usual modes of special-day celebration: Columns in newspapers and sites, seminars, exhibitions of paintings made by school children, cubicle-decoration competitions and environment-theme dressing in offices etc. etc. I am not saying that all this is bad. It definitely makes people aware of the critical nature of this issue.

But what I am wondering that does all this REALLY make any impact? Did you use less water in bath before you wore green clothes? Did you switch off the unnecessary lights in the hall/room where the seminar took place? Did you switch off your monitor when you went for cofee after reading that article on environment?

I have always believed that symbolism helps when it makes impact, however small it may be. But should we support symbolism just for the sake of it? My company celebrates Earth Week (17th-25th April) every year and they have got it both right and, well.. not-so-right! This celebration involves not only mandatory awareness creation activities but also activities which create tangible results. Projects like plantation, building rain water harvesting system (RWHS) etc. do 100 times more good than making people aware by shoving down insipid slogans down their tympanic cavity (i.e. ear!) because nothing motivates more than a successful example!
I was earlier mentioning of symbolism and that’s where the not-so-right part kicks in. In one of the mails leading to Earth Week was a fact: 10 litres of water is required to produce 1 sheet of A4 paper. Interesting. But this fact was lost on the organizers who dutifully stuck a chart paper for people to write slogan and graffiti. Last year hundreds or maybe thousands of A4 sized glazed paper posters were put up on notice boards in Oracle offices across the world.

The worst examples are those mega concerts (which consume enough power to light hundreds of small houses!) aimed towards ‘saving the planet’!

My question is that are we not doing the same thing which we are asking people to refrain from? Isn’t our symbolism doing more harm than good? Should our own carbon footprint not remain small (if possible, go down!) when we talk about saving Earth and spreading awareness? Definitely we can do so and yes that would mean a different style of celebrating Earth Day.

(Image courtesy: Deccan Chronicle, 22nd April 2010)

Happy New Decade!

Greetings from DYPC

Request to requesters: Please tell us more!

For long the request page on DYPC had the description field as non-mandatory. Description field was to capture the details about how the donated PC would be used. Will it be used in the school/NGO office for helping in the daily administration and management or will it be used for educational purposes in a class room or lab?

Though it was not a required field, it was made amply clear that this information is very crucial in the request being accepted or rejected. You might argue that if it was such a critical information why the field was not mandatory? Well the reason was that I trusted our requesters and believed that only those who are really interested in proper usage would agree to give this detail since they would ensure that their request is not rejected due to lack of details.

But I was wrong!

The requests piled up but nobody ever bothered to give any kind of details. Since we didn’t want to disappoint any one, we mailed them for details. Some who did got their requests approved, others who didn’t faced rejection.

But now the era of mollycoddling is over and details have been made mandatory. Requesters will not be able to submit a request without giving us proper information about how they intend to use the machines.

Here is what they can tell us:
1) Brief description of your school/organization and its activities.

2) Is it a registered NGO/school? If yes give details

3)About number of children in your school and how many of them will benefit?

I hope this will help us in getting really genuine requesters so that people can donate without any kind of apprehension.

What is your opinion about this change?

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!

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.