Slum Carnival! Pranitaa Pandit talks about new initiative by her NGO Prasara Care Foundation

With an aim to create a world of Givers and help all those who require it, actress Pranitaa Pandit started her NGO, Prasara Care Foundation, about two years back. The organisation recently organised the Slum Carnival, a carnival set up in a slum where they can spot talent.

Talking about how it all began, she says, “Prasara Care Foundation has been running for almost 2 years now. We will be completing 2 years super soon and the whole idea of this was to create a world of givers. And initially, it was 3 like-minded people who met and thought that we want to work towards being givers ourselves before we actually requested other people to join and support us. And there are a lot of people in this world who want to be there to give or to do something nice. Sometimes they don't have time to do that and that's how we came into being because we all were on the same page where we wanted to be givers and do something nice. But we were doing it at a very small scale and that's when we came up with the idea that we should do our own thing and contribute our own funds in order to do something nice together. So initially, I wanted to do something it could have been on a small scale. From three people coming together, we could do better things and do bigger activities and help a lot of people in one go. Also, everyone has their own lives and their own struggles and in this whole chaos of life you sometimes want to do things but time, family, and situations restrict you. So, we thought okay if I'm not able to, someone else might be able to. So that's how we kind of started. And that's how Prasara Care Foundation came into being.”

She adds, “We are doing our first slum carnival, which was a beautiful idea given to us by Mr. Sahil Seth IRS himself. Of course, once we heard it, we thought that it was such an amazing idea. My daughter is really young and we always want to give the best to our kids, but what about the kids who are in slums. They never get to see the carnival. They never are pampered. They don't know what a magic show and little things actually bring a smile to their faces. It was a beautiful thought and we are working on it now. We want to expand and do the slum carnival everywhere all around India where we organize these small carnivals in slums for underprivileged kids when they have a day off and day out.”

She adds, "This time Bosco Martis, Zareen Khan, Bhagyashree, Sakshi Tanwar, Shiny Doshii, Daljit Kaur, Rashmi Desai, Nupur Joshi and many more people supported us. So we get confidence that people are willing to do it. Otherwise you have to ask, please put a story. It sometimes feels like a favour but I think there's no harm."

Talking about the carnival, she says, “As I have said that there are a lot of people, in fact, who we have been collaborating with. We want to create a world of givers, and that includes all NGOs, every human being, who is part of our organization, who is associated or was a member with us who is contributing. So, it is completely transparent. There's nothing hidden, because of course, the whole concept was started by us putting our own money. The idea was never to ask for any money or raise money but we understood in our journey how we have become more powerful when we have all these people with us. So the whole idea is to unite and conquer. I think it's time to unite to be big as givers and conquer poverty, conquer people, who are struggling, and conquer health issues that people are struggling with. Somewhere wherever we can help, we just go out there and try to give it our best.”

Meanwhile, she is very clear about her foundation’s objective. “As I said the key objective is to make this world of givers and we are not really restricted or restricting ourselves to only one cause. We initially also thought that we would do small acts of kindness because a year or 2 back, we were not as big. We were only 3 people but today there are so many people who are attached to our organization. We have grown from 3 to 50. We have already reached that mark and now we are now out there to make it big. We have also got our 80G certification. So, there are a lot of non-executive directors now and we are adding to our organization. We are adding people who can make a very minimal kind of contribution and we will keep doing activities. As of now, all we have done is work for the underprivileged massively, people struggling with health ailments children especially.  So it is of course for the other privileged children, helping them, giving them a platform, and helping them do better in life.”

Ask her if anyone wants to open an NGO, what are the key factors one should keep in mind, and she says, “A lot of people are thinking of opening an NGO and they should. They should create a system for being givers and I completely support that idea. One thing that is most important that you should keep in mind is your heart. Your heart needs to be in the right place to be able to start this particular foundation. At the same time again, it's the consistency & sustainability which one has to work towards.You have to be very consistent and all of us get looped into our own struggles that's why one thing that one has to be mindful of before starting is whether I'll be able to keep going on or if it is a one-time act. So if you're somebody who will be consistent and who has the passion and the heart is at the right place, then just go for it.” she concludes.