Design Chords Blog

As mentioned in our previous post we’re covering our first Non-Profit, based out of India – GEC. A good friend – Akash Deep from Chandigarh is a part of this social initiative who will be talking about its operations and how their NGO can benefit from work done by professional designers. (GEC is willing to get their Mascot designed from DesignChords community if they find a few volutneers here, interested may let them know)

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GLOBAL ENVINRONMENT CONCERN (www.globaleconcern.com) – GEC works for spreading awareness and protecting our environment by educating the people. We started as a youth organization aimed at developing innovative projects to spread the concern about the state of environment.

Work: We have started projects like Gift a Plant, Pick a Plant and Be a Santa which involve gifting of plans to friends, planting trees and distributing free saplings. Within a year we have started with an evening school for slum children in Chandigarh. Recently with the efforts of our president – Mr. Rahul Gupta, we started with a evening school in a building provided by the Chandigarh Administration. Our volunteers teach the slum children and help them to work toward a better and prosperous future

Need for Publicity & Networking: Manpower is of most importance to an NGO and thus recruitment is very important activity for us as we want to  recruit like minded people who have a passion for the cause. Due to lack of funds NGOs are not able to reach out to volunteers  in time who feel for the cause and want to work for it. In-spite of working in this sector where there are ~1.2 millions NGOs in India itself, I barely know utmost 50. This highlights the need to step up the publicity & networking means for such initiatives. Another prominent problem is that we have to reply on in-house skills for creating websites, designing posters, bringing out newsletter reports and making animations & videos. The work is rarely completed and if done it mostly lacks the much needed professionals touch.

I still remember when I asked one of our member to sketch something for ‘Gift a Plant’. Here is the poster which our member Kavijit made by hand.

Role of Designers: I have worked with many NGOs before starting GEC who have great ideas but very small platforms to spread them. I think designers can help them realize their dreams. Posters, newsletters, websites, logos, mascots, animations, videos have a greater impact at the people. These lead to more visibility for the organization as well as more awareness among the people. An event or a project is limited to particular set of people but a good animation can impact millions of people within no time.

Through the platform provided by DesignChords many NGOs can benefit as they can reach out to quality designers throughout the world who feel for the cause and help create an impact with their talents! Though social organisations don’t have much to offer on the financial side, I can tell from my personal experience that the inner happiness and empowerment that one feels by helping someone improve his quality of life is a priceless experience.

Thanks and Best Regards

Akash Deep