Brihat-Saman - Chinmaya Mission Dallas/Fort worth

Pragati
A little over a year ago, I was searching for
a way to help the community, possibly
through some sort of charity project.
That’s when my parents suggested that I do
something that involved helping people in
India. I asked my Balavihar classmates if
they would like to help me. They agreed. We
decided to name the group Pragati which
means “progress” in Hindi. Among many
ideas of how to share our bounty with other
people in India, we narrowed it to two options
- collecting school supplies for children
or clothing for families. After much
deliberation, we settled on a clothing drive
at Saaket.
What none of the members of our group
foresaw was the sheer volume of clothing
that we would receive. After three weeks,
we found that we had over 650 lbs. of
clothing! We were very happy about our success
in getting so much, but our job was only
half done. We met on and off to sort the
clothes into the good, the bad and the ugly.
They were also sorted into mens’, womens’,
girls’, and boys’ clothes, but then summer
came and we all went on our separate ways.
The momentum was lost.
The next challenge was indeed the biggest
impediment - shipping. Unfortunately, the
shipping costs were upwards of $1000, some
even close to $6000! After a few months
of searching, - we struck gold; we found
someone who was willing to ship all 13
boxes. It is such a relief to know that the
clothing has indeed been shipped and is on
its way to India.
After it was all over, we looked back and
examined why our efforts ended up being
such a long toilsome process. Our conclusion
was that we started too big which
made it difficult for us to focus. Shipping
to India is no small feat, especially for a
group of inexperienced teenagers! Added
to that, lack of organized effort and leadership
made our planning inefficient. It
severely disabled the group because Everybody
was waiting for Somebody, and Nobody
ended up doing anything.
Looking ahead to the season spring energizes
us. However, this time around, the
energies (shakti) will have to be balanced.
The iccha shakti, desire, will need to be
honed as we look to the single goal of
sharing our bounty with the needy. The
kriya shakti, action, will need to be focused
as we have to work on our single
goal without distraction. The jnana shakti,
knowledge, will have to be expanded upon
as we research, plan everything out beforehand,
and create structure within our
ranks. When these three energies are
nurtured and balanced, the future success
for Pragati is inevitable. Pragati is now a
leaner, meaner team as we internalize Gurudev’s
advice, “Plan out your work, then
work out your plan.”
Rohan Menon, Grade 10