– This blog post is written by Vivek Amola and Mohd Shamoon from the Glific team

Each and everyone of us wants to do something good in their life. But unless we are aware of the things that are wrong in the society one could never think what good can be done.

Thankfully we were able to get in touch with so many amazing people who have felt and seen specific problems in the society that they can help with and it couldn’t have happened without being a part of Glific. This sprint was much of an eye opener for leaving out the techie and to talk about the problems that we are solving.

We landed in Mumbai on 27th Feb and went to Lobo’s house to start off the 7-day sprint for Glific. 

It started with meeting some young girls from the Aasha foundation which is a shelter home in Mumbai that supports 36 girls. Lobo introduced them to us and we had a nice conversation with them. All of them enjoyed spending time with each other and they even taught us to dance. They told us about themselves and their love for basketball.

After lunch, we went out for Mumbai darshan and tried to cover the sites mentioned by Lobo, Sharing a glimpse of Mumbai we saw.

It was a delightful tour of the city, we had a Vada Pav in the nearby market and then went straight to our stay.

We all had dinner together and discussed the plan of the sprint. The 7-day sprint was packed with NGOs coming and working with us closely. 

The NGOs, we had plan to meet were Bhandu, Mukkamar and SOL

Meeting with Bandhu

Jacob from the Bandhu team was the first one that we met at the sprint. They were using Glific for some time and we had some small conversations with them but we were not completely aware of what Bandhu solved exactly.

Jacob gave an amazing presentation that made us aware about the problems a migration worker had to face all across India and how Bandhu is trying to solve it with their program.

We also met Rushil (co-founder of Bandhu) the next day over lunch when he told us about how their research at MIT led to the starting of Bandhu. 

Meeting with Mukkamaar and Slam Out Loud

Next few days we have a meeting with Ishita from the Mukkamaar team and Drashti from Slam out loud. Mukkamukar was a Mumbai based and Drashti was working from Mumbai for SOL, 

We had a very insightful discussion about their vision and goals with the Glific. It was really good to know about the impact they are making on the ground, something can only be felt and understood in person. Felt really proud of the Glific and how it’s being utilized for a change.

Akhilesh from the team have shared his experience on working with Ishita for the Mukkamukar case. Read here

Dinner with MAD(Make a difference) and Avanti team

Conversation over dinners were the ones to look forward to. We met Jithin the founder of MAD and his wife who told us all about the amazing work they did at MAD shelters.

Jithin explained It takes seven generations for a person in a shelter home to come out of poverty and live a good life and how they are helping it to reduce it to single generation

The next day we met Akshay and Pritam from Avanti fellows and got to know the insights of the education system and how they were helping to make it better.

With Akshay and Pritam from Avanti team

Fun with morning walks

The morning walks was our energy dose for the daily routine work schedule for the sprint. It was also a way to try out new places to eat in Mumbai and explore the city. Lobo always make sure to get us in a new place every day.

Food tripping

Besides exercise we also made sure to try all the famous Mumbai dishes and Lobo did make sure we got to try the best of everything around us. Some of the best food we had on the trip was from Thaker Bhojanalay, Bade Miya, Badshah Cold drink, Super Deluxe.

And best one for the last: the awesome homemade food from Lobo’s family. 

Getting to meet these many people from different walks of life and their dedicated efforts to bring change in this world really motivates you to do something bigger than yourself.