Funny Side (Hopefully) Up

We're done! Nearly 5000 kids, 5 lakh rupees and 143 donors later, I figured I ought to give you guys an update about what actually happened on the big day. My day began at 6:50 a.m, considerably earlier than my usual waking time on a holiday. My phone's ringtone cut into my slumber. One of the volunteers was calling me to ask for details about their orphanage. Seeing as it was nearly seven, I figured I might as well get dressed and prepare for the day ahead of me. The deliveries really began around 8:30. I was standing in a spirit-sapping drizzle at our neighbourhood Independence Day celebration, trying, like all the other attendees, to look like I wouldn't prefer to be inside with a hot cup of tea and something satisfyingly deep-fried. As the flag was being hoisted, my phone vibrated in my pocket, and I picked it up. Farooq from McDonald's was calling to let me know that the first delivery was on time. One short, hushed conversation later, I got back to looking sui...

Well, here we are. The eve of the delivery. We've raised over ₹5, 00, 000 from people around the world, and by the end of this week, we'll have delivered meals to 5,264 kids. We've placed phone calls to nearly 80 orphanages and racked up positively astounding cell phone bills. Before the delivery, though, I wanted to talk about the actual process behind the initiative. Like last year, we decided to do this altogether too close to D-day: we wanted to do the deliveries on the 15th of August, and we began work on the 1st of August, only 15 days before. The first thing we had to do was get in touch with McDonald's. We called their head office in Mumbai, where we navigated an electronic answering system that was, apparently, designed to make life as difficult for callers as possible. Several minutes and an angry outburst and later, I was speaking to the operator at McDonald's, who connected me with someone else, who connected me, via a third intermediary, with their o...

It's 8:11am on a Saturday morning and like most people my age, I'd much rather be asleep right now, but fortunately, duty calls. I wanted to give you people an update of sorts about the project. So far, we've raised around 2,40,000 (our donation page shows 3,10,000 because of an error). We're nearing the halfway mark, and I figured I ought to let everyone know what this project actually entails. There's three big components to this project - children, volunteers and funding. So far, we have around 3,200 meals which need to be delivered. I know our goal was 5,000, and we have enough orphanages to reach that number, but the problem is, as of right now, we have neither the funds nor the volunteers to cover that. In terms of volunteers, we were hoping to have one at each orphanage. According to our estimates, it'll take around 60 orphanages for us to reach 5000 kids, and we have exactly 15 volunteers. The last date for signing up as a volunteer is the 14th of Au...