The cold breeze in Hyderabad makes us want to curl up under a blanket and sleep, but for the many homeless people in the city, it is an everyday nightmare as they struggle to sleep.
“Once a few friends and I went out for a tea late in the night. We saw the people were sleeping on streets and covering themselves with newspapers and plastic covers,” recalls Amit Pandey, a 21-year-old B.Tech student. Seeing the plight of the homeless people shivering at the street-corners, Amit and his 19 other friends took the initiative to distribute blankets to the poor across the city.
For a group of students with limited pocket money, money was a concern, so they came up with the idea of raising money by collecting old newspapers from local residents and selling them.
They formed a group this year in August and named it ‘Youth for Nation’ to help people of the city.
Amit, a resident of JP Nagar in Miyapur, and his friends went ahead with the plan this winter.
“We spent the first week of the month deciding how we can raise the fund, but finally we decided to collect newspapers from local residents and sell them to raise money. To cover more areas of the city we divided the group into two,” Amit explains.
(Amit and his team collected nearly 900 kg newspapers)
Amit’s group held campaigns in various residential colonies of Miyapur for the help.
While another team of 10 people led by Srikanth, a member of YFN, did the same from Serilingampally area.
“We got a great response, it was beyond what we expected,” says Sandeep, another member of Youth for Nation.
The Miyapur group collected nearly 800 kgs of newspaper while the Serilingampally group managed collect about 430 kgs of newspapers.
On December 12, together they distributed 153 blankets across the city.
“We are still left with money, and we intend to distribute rest of the blankets to a nearby tribal area where people are in need,” Amit says. However, they are still unsure about which area they should go to.
“We have limited resources, it would have been great if we could help everybody who is in need in the city,” says Narsingh Rao, another member of the group.
The group of friends initially also helped many people near their residential area during September flood in Hyderabad.
“That was inspiring. I felt so good after providing food packets and helping people at that time. Later, we decided to form a group. On August 15, we named it and decided to help people in whatever means possible. I know It is not something big, but I feel even small efforts to help someone can make big different in the society,” Amit says.
“Some of them held our hand and told their stories. It was a very emotional moment but at the end of that night I felt good that I contributed to the society. They even blessed us,” Sandeep says recalling his experience with the poor.
“We silently wrapped few of them with the blankets at night while they were in deep sleep but the moment they felt the warmth of the blanket, few of them burst out crying while some were shocked,” he added.