Never say never is a maxim I should have by now learnt to accept and follow. Once again I find myself in a situation where I have to get off my high horses and humbly accept what I haughtily rejected till date. But necessity is the mother of all inventions and faced with rapidly dwindling bank balances and a shrinking donor base one has to meekly accept to eat the humble pie. I must admit that what makes this possible is the magnitude of what is at risk.

To understand what I am trying to say one needs to go back several years, to the times when pwhy was still in its infancy and one was looking for possible ways to secure it and see it grow. One of the avenues suggested was to seek sponsorships for individual children as that was tested ground and one that had proved very successful. Never said I, as to me it had always seemed a rather condescending approach and one that led to marginalise children: the sponsored one versus the one without a sponsor. I stood my ground and must admit met with reasonable success as we managed to go and grow my way for almost a decade.

I have always been aware of the fragility of our funding model and have never stopped looking and thinking of better ways. Our one rupee a day programme failed to take off for reasons that I still cannot fathom. To me it seamed absurdly simple and eminently doable. And yet it did not work. I guess the amount sought was too small and did not give the donor the fillip it sought. Planet why us definitely the panacea of all ills, but comes a huge price and will take a long time to come by. In the mean time a family of almost a 1000 now has to be sustained in the times of recession.

I have been vociferously claiming that the crises we face is not an economic one but a moral one. I have been clamouring that was was needed was to find ways of reinstating values like compassion and empathy as I feel that it would go a long way in redefining our lives. Time to walk the talk even it it means giving up long held views. To survive today we too need to reinvent ourselves and what takes precedence is the lives and dreams of the children of pwhy and not some highfalutin idea one had once held. So I find myself extolling the sponsorship avenue: yes you heard right I am seeking sponsors for our children to enable us to carry on. True that we have had to modify the approach to our reality: we are not asking for a sponsor per child but for people accept to sponsor either one child with disability or two creche children or again 4 primary or secondary kids. We would provide information about the group selected to all sponsors.

Wow.. I have come a log way. What still irks me a little is the fact that whereas this approach seems to find takers, the one rupee programme which to me was easier on the pocket never really took off. I guess that the reason for this is that the later was too impersonal and did not give the donor the high that accompanies any act of charity!

Beggars cannot be choosers; one had to respect market forces; all is fair in love and war… There are many things I can say to myself to assuage ruffled feathers and yet the moral of the story is that one has to learn never to say never again.