My friend and supporter Damyanti Biswas has asked to be a guest on her blog every second Friday of the month. The first post was up last week and was entitled When at the Edge of a Precipice, What Gives You the Courage to Go on?

It talks about Project Why and how over the years we have been faced with obstacles and challenges and come out of it each time simply because we never gave up. It makes me ask myself whether courage was something I always had in me, or whether, as much else in my life, it was something Project Why gifted me. The answer is undoubtedly the later.

True I had in my life before Project Why shown the ability to overcome fears, but the courage I refer to today is the one that makes you stand for your beliefs without wavering, in the face of all adversity, and know you have to go on no matter what. You can call it crossroads, or standing at the edge of a precipice and knowing you have to jump even if you do not have a parachute. You just have to create your own.

In the twenty years of running Project Why I have found myself in this position many times and each and every time found the courage to carry on. I have lost count of the number of instances when the reasonable option was to stop and even walk away. For me that was never an alternative. And that is how we grew from a small family of two scores to one off over thousand members; that is how scores of broken hearts were repaired and moribund children given the hope of life; that is how every challenge was met and solutions found.

Today I ask myself where did I draw the strength and find that ‘courage’ in spite of so many setbacks. Or let me take it a step further: was it really courage or as someone said the fear of falling! I do not know. Maybe it was/is the fear of facing myself on judgement day if such a day exists. There was no alternative.

And the ‘courage’ – let us call it that – came and comes from all the souls who have entrusted me with their dreams. Every child that enters the portal of Project Why does so with the hope of changing its life. It is a pact we make and each has to stand by it. And to do that means not to give up.

Today I am again at the edge of a precipice. Project Why is on life support with some centres only funded for a few months. We now need to look for people willing to support our work long time. It is daunting indeed but we have the courage to continue!