"Help Rahul Campaign" : Part-1

The Great Campaign: from My Perspective

This was the first major campaign of my life in which I got totally involved (physically as well as mentally) forgetting everything about my own life.

But after successful finishing of the Campaign, I had such a satisfying feeling that I can’t express here in words.

To Know who Rahul is and what his problem was, pleases Click HERE.

The Campaign ran for 10 days and by the 11^th day we had achieved our target.

There were a total of 30-35 persons involved dedicatedly in this campaign.10- 12 persons were in the core managing as well as execution group and the remaining 20-25 persons were in the supporting and execution group. Without these 30-35 persons, collection of such a large amount would still have been a distant dream.....

As soon as I got to know the details on the 27^th March night, I got active.

At the same time (27^th night,10 pm) our result had been uploaded on site, so I couldn’t do much work on it on 27^th night. But since 28^th morning I got working over it. I first started working on my personal idea-ONLINE campaign. For that I put all the details of Rahul’s case on my blog here-

shantihp.blogspot.com/2010/03/save-his-life-please.html

After that I started pleading/appealing all the Celebrities and other twitter friends to donate money for this cause.

On the 28^th eve, we had a meeting in the parking area around TIME institute. There about 25 persons were present. We talked about our plans and how we are going to implement it. Our first target was collection from our own College.

From Monday,30^th March, our College level Collection was underway in full flow.

By the 11^th Day,4^th April(since our Campaign started), we had actually surplus money coming into our hands. Our target was to Collect Rs. 6 lacs for Rahul’s operation and on the 11^th Day our Collection had surpassed that target by about 50k. We were actually finding it hard to stop the inflow of money. As soon as we had reached our target, we had informed everybody to stop any further collection but finally we had in our hand an amount that we had never anticipated to be able to collect initially.

Such was the success of our Campaign...... Our Campaign was hugely successful and I really feel proud to be part of it.

In this whole Campaign, myself and Harpreet worked hand in hand. In each activity we took part together. On College level we had the responsibility of Collection from our own classmates and the faculty members of our Dept. We performed that part very well.

Apart from that, in our outside Campaign, we(me and Harpreet) managed to convince all major News Channels here to cover our public Campaign and broadcast a comprehensive story on Rahul’s plight. Along with that, all major print media started giving us spaces in their Newspapers when they saw major News Channels already lapping up the story. So our media efforts too played an important role in fund raising as media created a lot of public awareness about Rahul’s case.

As I wrote in my first few lines, this was the first major Campaign of my life. On getting the News of achieving our target, I was in seventh heaven. This was my most noble effort till now and I will never be able to forget these precious days. I was completely submerged in the Campaign for the whole 10 days. In the first 3-4 days, when our collection had not crossed even 1 lakh, I was unable to have good sleep, I used to sleep at 1am and then wake up at 4 am for my ONLINE campaign. It was only after our collection crossed 1.5 lakhs that I felt a bit relaxed and started having my normal sleep.

These 11 days will remain the most memorable days for me for long. This was my first event in which I played a major role(at least I think so)and worked totally independently that too for a for a noble cause. In these 11 days I laughed, got ecstatic, cried multiple times(sometimes publicly too) and even had a serious fight. But still I am really very-very happy that I took part in this great Campaign.

I learnt so many things in these 11 days. Some very vital lessons that I learnt are mentioned below-

1) Don’t expect much from persons who seem to have lot of money, power and peer group to flaunt. Most of the works are done by lesser known persons whom you would never have expected to do much.

2) If you come forward and take an initiative to do something, you must have the guts to face some firm, pointed fingers at you.

3) Generally (by default), majority lies with the powerful. So even if you are right in doing something and have some conflicts with someone, do not expect others to support you because very few persons have the guts to stand up for the right.

Anyway, these 11 days will always remain fresh in my memory . I am really glad to be involved in this and will always cherish the memory of these days........

to be continued.................