theculturalconnect.com

Non-Profit

Udai

Founded

January 2005

Website

udai.org

Offices

San Diego (USA) and Waterloo (Canada)

Ethnicity

Indian

About the non-profit

Udai is a student-based initiative to promote awareness of social issues in India and other countries and contribute towards their alleviation. We work as an extremely informal group, currently based in San Diego (USA) and Waterloo (Canada). Udai has threefold objective: (1) Help grass-root organizations at technical/intellectual/manpower/financial levels. (2) Raise awareness about important social issues through campaigns and seminars. (3) Provide a platform to learn about the philosophy and heritages of countries. Collaborations with other organizations to combine complementary skills are critical to our working.

Organizations day-to-day responsibilities?

Udai's working is centered on the projects. Our members work on different projects in small teams, and the day-to-day responsibilities depend on individual projects. There are very few formalities to be taken care of, and we ensure that instead of distributing organization wide responsibilities, we divide the work based on individual projects depending on members' interests.

Most notable milestones

Our first major project was the 'Inspiring Independent India' internet-campaign to raise awareness about the achievements and problems of India since its independence. We later partnered with NetIP San Diego and Power of Love Foundation to organize a large fund-raiser to support Jagruthi, a Bangalore based non-profit that provides health-care to HIV/AIDS affected children. We have utilized the technical knowledge of our members to build websites for non-profits including Jagruthi and SHAII. Waterloo chapter has taken a large Knowledge-Bridge initiative to collect several thousand used books and ship them to needy children in India. Besides these, we have been regularly hosting panel-discussions and exhibitions to raise awareness on several issues. Our website http://udai.org contains a more comprehensive list of the projects that we have undertaken.

What's the niche?

Udai exemplifies a new model of non-profits that are making large contributions with almost no resources. We have tried hard to maintain our nimble and informal nature, while ensuring continued progress on several projects with significant impact. As a matter of fact, we are not actually a registered non-profit, but rather a recognized student organization at multiple universities. This has allowed us to do away with a lot of paperwork. We work as a 100% flat organization with no organizational posts and offices (except what the university policies enforce). We do have leadership but that also is project based and this model has worked really well for us so far. It will be an interesting challenge for us to continue this mode of functioning as we grow further.

What's the biggest challenge?

The biggest challenge lies in working with the grass-root organizations that may be located in a remote location in India, across half the globe. In such cases, regular communication becomes a major challenge. Telephone calls and emails are usually fine, but not always sufficient or feasible. Some of our members have been able to personally visit such collaborators during their home visits. We realize that human interaction is of critical importance in social work. But given our minimalist budget, Udai cannot fund such international travels, and this is a big challenge for us.

What's in store for the future?

Udai is less than 2 years old, and has been on a relatively fast track, rapidly taking up and finishing small projects. This makes it hard to accurately predict where we will be in the future. As we continue to work and gain experience, we expect to grow in number and to more geographic locations. We are also trying to establish our center in India that could provide a direct bridge between the grass-root activities in India and our members spread in different countries. Irrespective of our growth, we will continue to maintain our informal and flexible work culture that defines us!

Who would you like to be contacted by?

Working jointly with other groups and organizations is an important part of our modus-operandi, and we would love to get in touch with such groups with complementary resources and skills, in the fields of education, health, applied technology, cultural heritage or awareness building.

Many of our members already work from distant physical locations, and we certainly need many more hands and minds to support our activities. We would love to get in touch with any individual, irrespective of where he/she lives, who finds our activities worthwhile and is interested in being a part of the effort. Our website http://udai.org provides information about our activities.

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Best way to stay ahead

As a non-profit, we look at other organizations as possible collaborators that we can work with and provide complementary skills. Thus finding out possible "competitors" and converting them into collaborators is our way to deal with competition!

Constantly educating oneself is important to be an effective social worker. To make it easier for all members, Udai has started the practice of Social Journal Club, a name that will immediately strike chords with graduate students! In academic parlance, a Journal Club is usually a group of students and faculty members that meets frequently to discuss recent articles from research journals. We have extended this concept to Social Journal Club (SJC) which usually forms one half of our bi-weekly meetings. In each SJC, one member leads a presentation/discussion on a non-profit, or a new development in the social field. Learning about diverse topics in reasonable depth during every meeting has been a really valuable education, as well as source of new ideas for us.

Guiding principle in life

Besides maintaining our informal structure, Udai has particular emphasis on people-driven-projects. Instead of the organization telling members what needs to be done in a top-down fashion, we work bottom-up, with individual members defining what the organization does. Every Udai member is free to work on a project he/she is passionate about, and the organization provides the necessary support. We respect and utilize the unique interests of every member, and this has allowed us to work in diverse fields with equal enthusiasm.

Yardstick of success

Ultimate yardstick of success would be how many children are we able to help fight AIDS, or how many children are able to use the books we provide or the educational content that we created. These are difficult to estimate though, and a simpler measure could be the number of short term and long term projects that we have successfully pursued jointly with grass root organizations.

Best practical advice

One thing that often plagues non-profits and charitable organizations is their affinity to prolonged discussions in poorly organized meetings. At Udai, we try to spend more time in action rather than lengthy discussions and debates. Just making sure that all meetings start and end promptly at stipulated time, with some concrete agenda, can make a huge impact on not only the efficiency of the organization, but also the number of people who are willing to be participate in such meetings.

What motivated you to get started?

To be frank, we did not have very clear goals in mind at the beginning. Many people want to do something good, but never get the right environment and opportunities to put their ideas into action. Some of us felt the same, and thought that an informal support group to bring together such people through-out UCSD campus can lead to some positive outcome. We also considered the possibility of joining some existing organization, however after some brain-storming, it became clear that there was a need for a new, informal, student-based organization. That led us to start Udai. Since then, we have expanded to Waterloo in Canada, and made members in many other cities.

Like best about what you do?

The best part about working with Udai is the conviction that every step taken is a step in the right direction. It is a good feeling to know that the small efforts we make today can bring smile to the face of a needy child tomorrow.

Like least about what you do?

As much as we try to avoid dealing with monetary issues, we often end up having to figure out how to collect, manage and disburse money. We try to leave the financial aspects to our collaborators, but sometimes we have to deal with it, something that most of our members don't love so much.

Udai: Impressive Student Initiative Towards a Better India

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