Trying to Stay Relevant

Few days back, I was having an interesting conversation with Mr. Tarun Manav, founder of Prerna Sewa Sansthan when there came a point where we started discussing how difficult it is to stay relevant these days. He mentioned that many a times some of his close friends have jokingly asked him to post something new around his work. Pondering over their words, he told me that his every day focus is to make sure food is distributed at set locations in Ghaziabad under his initiative of Ann Patra and for this he follows a set routine every day. He told me wondering what new can he post on social media regarding his mundane task to ignite excitement among his friends. Tarun ji forgot even when the task is mundane, its impact is not.

This conversation made me wonder about my work. Most of my days are spent following the same routine- getting up, making breakfast, getting ready for office, coming back from office, making dinner, working on urgesture, studying and sleeping. Even if I try to recollect how my routine in office differs on a day to day basis, I can only pinpoint the numbers on excel which I work on; keeping my routine the same. What if my boss starts asking me daily about what new I did; my immediate response will be what new is there to do!

Even when I workout, most of the exercises I follow are fixed and there is a weekly pattern at play. What if my trainer starts asking me what new I did today and If I have nothing to show, will he/she stop assisting me?

I think Tarun ji’s friends and most of us miss the perspective that for us helping an NGO in cash or kind may be a once a month or once in a blue moon event but for the owners of the NGO, it is their daily routine ( or struggle)  that they have to perform barring which people can go hungry for or animals might even die due to injury.

But still, even though most of the time of these founders should be spent on the ground helping people, animals, nature or whatever journey they have embarked upon, a good amount of their time is also spent creating posts, videos with a hope that someone like you or me will see their work, get inspired and help them survive.

Unfortunately, unlike fashion bloggers NGOs can’t change their outfits daily to catch our attention on social media. These small scale NGOs don’t even have a social media team, fundraiser team, video editing team. Everything is done by a handful of people and therefore their appeal follows a similar tone & content. Limited knowledge on these domains makes their journey tedious.

This is where UrGesture comes into picture. We extend our knowledge and expertise with respect to creating diversified posts, video, arranging volunteers, digitizing data etc for these NGOs so that most of their time is spent on the ground helping the society on their donors’ behalf rather than appealing and trying to stay relevant.

We, along with NGOs try to bring you content which can solve your queries and give you as much information as possible to help you see through the NGOs and how your money is going to help them. 

So next time you watch a video shared by an NGO, do take a pause to appreciate what they are doing rather than how it is being conveyed.