We are delighted to share a blog written by students from Team Hotdog, from The Scindia School, delivering a Global Goals project for the 2020-21 GSL Global Goals Competition.
Their project is among over 957 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community.
Fantabulous
Project Summary
Hotdogs is an NPO and a youth led social organisation. We established it with a single thought in our minds and that is all our works, initiatives and efforts are mainly focused on two SDG goals set by the United Nations which are Life on Land and Zero Hunger. Hotdogs is also an ever growing group of individuals of The Scindia School, Gwalior, India who value the resources gifted to all of us by the nature and believe unanimously in practical actions.
Our project is a mix of leadership skills too, due to which our actions will always consist of the best potential in making this sphere a better and fortunate place. This initiative is slowly and steadily influencing the people and bringing about a glocal change. Till date, we have fed around 5000+ kids in 7 different villages on a regular basis. We have even fed homeless people in metropolitan cities outside hospitals in collaboration with different food agents wherein the funding was totally done by us.
Also currently we have at least assisted and are assisting and taking care of around 7000 stray animals of all sorts spread all over India through our volunteers. Lastly, as we are boarders and live in one of the biggest and oldest forts of the country, we have planted around 1000 saplings ranging from our school’s fields to the driest of areas in the fort. We have been also planting at areas where there’s this climb towards the fort so that later on when it grows it becomes an attraction for anyone who comes to visit the fort. Some people just plant saplings but forget that they also have to maintain it. But we here at Hotdogs are maintaining it regularly through the water supplied from ancient water harvesting techniques where water is automatically stored in taals also known as underground natural wells and hence in this process no water is wasted nor overused.
From our social media handle too, we are trying to spread as much awareness as we can through posters, real life stories and videos on how the earth and it’s greenery is degrading due to our attitude towards mother nature.
Our Journey
Due to our endless hours of work, the whole team was able to find out the things that they were way much better in like content creating and writing, video editing, management etc. so all in all this project helped us grow and develop holistically.
The difficulties we faced while completing this project was reaching out to people for distributing the resources. Our main aim was, and is still, to reach the far flung villages in corners of all states because that’s where people live with the least resources and they don’t have access to some more resources which are a must to live a healthy life. And also the next issue was to convince the people of these areas and specially their chiefs because they seldomly trusted anyone who came in from the city. And similarly while handling the stray animals, specially dogs there was this issue that what if the dog had rabies or what if the chicken had flu.
Lastly the major show stopper was the COVID-19 Pandemic due to which the frequency of us going to various areas multiple times was next to impossible and also every time we met with new people, the more there was this risk of catching the deadly virus. But at least we have solved all of these by using the right methods like contacting the area’s commissioner, wearing PPE kits and masks, and ensuring with the local veterinary doctor whether the particular area’s animals are safe or not.
Our Next Chapter
By the end of this competition we aim on feeding 50000+ people within a span of 3 months pan India. Similarly we will be impacting and saving the lives of 2000 stray animals by feeding, rescuing and adopting them by the end of this project. We are not at all doing all these for profits or publicity, we are doing it for the sake of humanity to show the bitter section of society, who think that animal cruelty is cool and torturing the future of the country by letting them starve on the streets, that people like us are still here and will always be there to save the dying souls on the out there.
Yes I would highly recommend the youth of today to start taking up necessary actions as it is a future that is being developed where ultimately all of us have to survive.
The 2020-21 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2021. If you belong to one of the 500+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.
