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A new experiment is completely changing lives in the rural areas of India by bringing luminosity where there used to be darkness.

The New York Times published a piece named, \”Husk Power for India\”. Power, which is common in the lives of most in advanced countries, is a rare bonus in far-flung areas of underdeveloped countries. What was once cattle feed is now used to generate power – rice husks.

Raised in the rural state of Bihar, Manoj Sinha understood what it was like to sit in darkness. Being an engineer with Intel Corporation he had all the ability to bring alive the dream of a lifetime. He led the advancement of his power equipment that produces electricity from rice husks and other farm wastes and now he trades it to hamlets across India.

Sinha is what could be called a social entrepreneur because he feels business is a solution to key social issues. \”Business leaders must realise that the world\’s poor need investments more than handouts,\” he says, adding, \”these are customers, not victims.\”

The article motivated me to think about offering things in a different way that made me ask myself, \”what is the most perfect form of giving?\” Is it edification, commerce or disaster aid? There are so many ways to create a difference. One way of giving can seem more productive or practical than other ways depending on the way it is given expression, viewed or put into practice.

I then came to identify there were eight sections to giving as a form to perceive this. So, let me outline the eight methods; which in effect are often \’phases\’ of giving as well.

Phase one: Exigency – salvaging and helping others who are suffering due to natural calamities, epidemic diseases or other insurmountable problems.

Phase two: Respite – providing respite from enduring need, poverty, ill-health, disadvantages or prejudice which otherwise would continue or deteriorate because of the lack of awareness, training or resources.

Phase three: Curing and defending – morally, bodily and spiritually. Many people carry scars that may be invisible but strongly constricting their lives. Giving the cure to release the long-standing suffering creates more chances for them while giving necessary defense gives them a feeling of security.

Stage four: Training – giving better training, knowledge and skill instruction to create empowered and practical solutions to resource creation while encouraging people to identify their singular talent to survive.

Phase five: Innovative investment – giving a helping hand, cash or material to those who have the ability to make a change. This gets weighed many times as the materials increase and is passed on to several others who again create more out of the chances given.

Stage six: Tenability – working together with the people in the local surroundings, creating tenable groups – ambience-wise and reciprocally.

Stage seven: Empowerment – sanctioning and influencing the people to set free their true capability and drive to make a difference. In this group of offering, the aim of offering changes from \’giving to those who are in need\’ to \’giving people an opening to give to others\’ and to the whole group.

Phase eight: Caring – just doing whatever we want to do to cherish and care for others. No tactic or expected result exists in this phase of giving. \’Giving\’ does not even exist here in the conventional sense of the word, as there is no sense of ownership or reasoning or yearning to alter anything. This is where we do not even have to worry about anything, we give as a part of our own delightful sense of being.

What we also perceive is that at each one of these eight stages of giving there are distinctive things that the donor gets back.

One: Sense of bonding

Two: Sense of wellbeing

Three: Relief from pain (our own)

Four: Thankfulness for our own ideas, gifts and conditions

Five: Long-term sense of involvement and fulfillment for our own life

Six: Improved atmosphere for our own life and for the lives of all those we value and cherish

Seven: Soul gratifying encouragement and devotion to our own purpose

Eight: Care

Giving has many levels and experiences depending on the giver and the receiver. And the \’stages\’ do not describe which one is more important than the other. All are necessary.

I was gifted with an experience early in 2008 while travelling with a group of dedicated entrepreneurs through India to see how we could be more effective in our giving. I was blessed to have one particular experience that made me think about what \’effective giving\’ really meant.

We were in a small town one day. Four of us had just called a taxi to take us to another town in the vicinities. We bargained with the driver with care as our hotel staff had told us beforehand that we could be duped since we were not local.

We chose to stop in front of the local train station for a short interval en route to the town. While the others went to use restrooms, I struck up a conversation with the driver of the taxi, standing nearby. With his limited English vocabulary and a smiling face that showed his black front teeth to advantage, he told me that he lived in the outskirts of the town and that he had a young wife and two kids who attended the local school – I began to feel a relationship with him.

I appreciated the fact of his having such a wonderful family and told him that I too had two little ones of almost the same ages as his. When the others were back the driver suddenly invited us to come to his house and have lunch. I took it only as a formality that was customary courtesy. But after taking us to the town center and leaving us there, he told us that he would wait for us until all our wandering in the town was over. And he really did. I was actually quite astonished to see him still remaining glued to the side of the road next to his taxi more than one hour later. We got into the taxi and he drove fast up the road to where he had his family.

When we landed there we were quite surprised to see the way he was living. It was in fact quite similar (if not worse) to the existence of the slum dwellers we had visited before that. From the bright new taxi he was driving, who could have pictured this

As he drove into the narrow unsealed street between small houses that were made with roughcast concrete blocks and mud painted walls, we almost regretted about saying yes to his invite. For a brief moment I felt pangs of guilt. \”How could I go to this man\’s home who didn\’t seem to have anything and I didn\’t even bring any food or gifts for his family\”, I thought.

As we got into his house, we saw a small pot and a stove on the mud floor. His shy sweet wife smiled and blushed at the sight of visitors and vanished into the cupboard sized storeroom of the house. As I looked around, I saw the man\’s neighbours giving the woman a few cups over the crumbling concrete walls. They simply didn\’t have enough cups in their house. There was just a single small room that had a lone cot and an old galvanised trunk adjacent to it.

The cab driver swiftly took out three hand-woven rugs from the galvanised box and placed it neatly on the small space of the mud floor keeping one on the bed.

Steaming cups of tea and hot snacks arrived soon. Both his kids as well as kids from the neighbouring houses came to see us and remained at the doorway. The six of us could just squeeze into the tiny room. I was curious to know where his children were sleeping. I thought maybe they had another space somewhere. To my astonishment, he just pointed at the chest and said with his happy smile that it was their bed.

He cheerfully informed us that he was a dancing expert of the area and pointed at the medals displayed on the recess above his bed. Bent on showing us his dancing skills he at once ran outside. From some place music started coming into the tiny room. He has no arrangement for music in the house, it was flowing in from outside. I wondered where it came from till I saw him bringing his taxi in reverse to the back wall of his house with the doors open and music flowing in from the high volume car radio!

The time moved fast (with his dancing and the many more cups of tea that followed) and very soon it was time to thank them for their great warmth and courtesy and make our move. As we got ready to leave and express our gratitude to him and his wife, he pulled out the best of all the rugs he had, and just gave it to us. It was one of the very few things he owned. It was impossible to believe that he was offering it to us.

We all politely declined his gift and walked out saying goodbye to all the people waving at us. We got confused about this whole thing. Should we have given some money to the family as their life obviously looked very limited? Should we have accepted his prized gift?

As I was thinking about this awe-inspiring experience after a few days, I considered our begging off his gift. He looked crest-fallen that we didn\’t accept the gift. It wasn\’t only the rejecting of the gift that remained in my mind.

I realised that the sense of discomfort I felt was actually coming from perceiving him as less fortunate. I was thinking that I couldn\’t possibly take anything from someone who had so little.

But did he really have nothing much? Maybe he had much more – many more.

Maybe the real present we could have given him then was to receive his present in utmost deference and thankfulness.

All actions of gifting and getting are essential for us to fill our world with plenty and contentment equally for both giver and getter. We can begin doing this instead of assessing and defending one over the other. The perfect act of gifting and getting needs no further clarification.

Manoj Sinha\’s words echo in my mind once again, \”these are customers, not victims.\” I can imagine the smiling faces of the villagers who are now proud to have electricity in their villages and the children who now can read books and learn in their homes at night.

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