"I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be 'happy'. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter and to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all."

- Leo C. Rosten

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

For Greater Good - PVR and its Nest



Working with PVR Nest on the Annual CSR Report of PVR Cinemas had been another priceless experience for me, not just in terms of adding value to my own awareness of the social sector and what, why and how more and more good is done to the world, but also in terms of taking another step forward in the quest of finding out my own self.
PVR Nest, undoubtedly, is doing very good work, irrespective of the scale of work. The entire team of this department, I strongly believe, is in this profession not by compulsion but by choice – the choice that is difficult to make as it approaches socialism by staying inside a capitalistic system.

My role in the annual report, 2011, had been to make a photographic documentary of the initiatives taken by PVR Nest – the CSR wing of PVR Cinemas, as well as taking interviews at field so as to document flesh and blood stories that reinsert in ones intellectual capacity the need of an intensity of efforts that have to be focused at bringing a lot of change if we are truly serious of making India a developed nation and save us from the shame of not ending up as Goldman Sachs once predicted. BRIC would perhaps end up as BRC.

The theory of PVR Nest is that PVR should have, and has, a sense of responsibility towards the development of the communities around every PVR cinema. From there sprang the idea of devoting towards community mobilization near some PVR complexes. Thus, PVR Nest has been into an important work of identification of endangered children in slums, rehabilitating them, and then preparing them for either livelihood generation or education. At the same time, PVR Nest is also into providing education to slum children in general, food distribution to them, and also generating awareness among slum dwellers regarding environmental and health issues. PVR Nest has been into collaboration with NGOs like Diya Foundation, Literacy India, and a few others.

That which struck me as truly valuable work is the identification of slum children who are victims of addiction to drugs and excessive alcohol, rescuing them from such a state, rehabilitating them to bring them back to normal, and then providing education to them or finding out opportunities of employment for those who have crossed the minimum age limit of starting to learn how to read and write from the scratch.
PVR Nest, unquestionably, is doing good work. I hope this stays in the long run and grows further. We need a lot of good in this world to heal its wounds. Unfortunately we do not have sufficient people dedicated to do work of such kind.