We did 1461 camps in all; which means an average of 4 camps every single day. A total of 245,873 patients were examined, given medication and spectacles (wherever needed) which means about 674 persons each day. We took a total of 36,267 patients to hospitals for surgery, which means an average of almosr 100 persons each day. Successful surgeries were done on 31,024 persons which means about 85 persons each day.
All surgeries were done free with the great help of Sri Sadguru (Ranchhoddas) Seva Sangh Trust, inspired by the great humanitarian saint Sri Ranchhoddas ji Maharaj, who left his earthly body in 1970, inspiring hundreds to serve the poor.
We do not have any medical.competence of our own, perhaps at best (if we are lucky) remove a straw from someone’s eye. But this quite massive achievement was done only through our wife grasaroots footprint.
This only validatea my long held conviction that the ide of domain competency and idea-bases social entrepreneurship hardly applies to the social / humanitatian sector. The CORE COMPETENCE of a grassroots organization is its GRASSROOTS CONNECT. All other competencies can be plugged in or acquired. The western idea of social entrepreneurship propounded by many celebrated fellowship fraternities seem to have missed this point. But this is not the space where I shall elaborate or substantiate this thesis.
It would have been very unlikely for the highly poor elderly we served and got treated, to have got vision restoration without their help. All camps were set up in extremely impoverished areas, mostly tribal pockets – and if ai have.my facts right, none in towns of even 15 thousand population.
We covered 29 districts out of 52 districts in the state and patients from tens of thousands of villages.
To put it in perspective the government hospitals and its entire machinery through its outreach doe
