Celebrating 100 Unsung Heroes
When I reflect on the 100 stories of Everyone Is Good At Something (EGS), I am reminded of Ernest Hemingway’s beautiful quote from A Farewell to Arms — “if people bring so much courage to the world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places.” Every EGS story is a story of how the world tried to break them, but then by their sheer resilience, they became stronger at their broken places.
The EGS campaign started after Vicky Roy reached out to me, offering his time to take photos if there was an appropriate project. I had been toying with the idea of something on the lines of Humans of New York, but focusing on Persons with Disabilities (PwD) from rural India. I have always believed in sharing the stories of these unsung heroes and I was keen on reaching out to the remotest parts of India. I was looking for someone willing to do this for 10 years! I have always believed that true impact can only be measured in the long run, and 10 years was a good indicator for every social movement. Finding Vicky was the missing piece of the puzzle. The next step was to convince CK Meena to edit and coordinate EGS operations — I knew she loved me too much to say “no” to my request. Then it was important to build the right online presence. This was much easier, as I had Jayanth, Bharath, Arun and Kishore in the technology team. Another important element was to keep the design simple and this is where we had the best designer volunteers at our disposal in Sriram and Tanya. Shibini and Tanya took charge of the social media aspect.
While we started small, over the last two years the volunteering team has grown to almost 25, with most of them being writers — we kept adding new members with Kavita, Pravesh, Swati and Sakhi forming the core, and Jayashree stepping in when Tamil or English were the PwD’s preferred mode of communication. Ramesh has been translating the stories into Tamil, Reghunathan into Malayalam, and after a long search we found Sunita to translate them into Hindi. Sunita also volunteered to do interviews, and since then more writers have magically appeared on the scene — Priti and Vibha and occasionally Subbu, Veda, and the tag team of Murali and wife Seetha. One of the biggest learnings for me is to build a team where “skills before passion” is fundamental. Everyone wants to volunteer and is well meaning, but what is more important is the skills you bring to the table. Passion without relevant skill is useless. And so the search to match the right skills that align with the mission continues.
While we have the discipline to bring a new uplifting story every week (and we want to do two stories a week), we have not been able to have the online reach we desire. Without any active marketing, the subscribers have grown to around 10K, mostly through word of mouth. I have always believed that the true testimony is when we have really touched ONE person deeply — likes and shares on social media are not the indicators that determine true change in people’s hearts; true change is when stories move people to action — and we share these stories in our regular monthly meetings. We have very consciously not shared the impact, because for the team, the journey of their own transformation is paramount. As Kavita our writer volunteer said, “The process of writing the stories has transformed me more than anything else in my entire life.” And that is a good starting point!
