What was my inspiration for "We Flap"?

As you all know, I started We Flap as a result of the inspiration from my daughter, Mandira and Sravish Sridhar. Since then many of you have wanted to know more about my daughter and Sravish and what they did to inspire me.

Mandira had always amazed me with her clever ideas since she was 4 years old and as she grew older there was a generosity and a sense of responsibility in her that I admired very much. To me, it was remarkable that she had these qualities at such a young age.

Mandira cared for the homeless, the orphaned and abused children, the poor, the tsunami victims and the children in Africa and India. Every time she cared, she gave money off her cash box, her books, her clothes, her shoes and encouraged everyone else to give of themselves. She had even convinced our bank manager to issue her a debit card to manage her bank account and keep track of expenses. I grew ecstatic listening to her interest in requesting information from homeless shelters, orphanages and other causes that she cared about. She only wanted to help the ones that were in dire need of help and had made out a list of questions to find out who needed the most help. She then asked me to contact the organizations and would follow up with me eager to understand the progress and feedback from these organizations. Once she had all the information on the needs of these organizations, she would check her cash box, her closet, the attic and the garage to see if she had the right things to give them. She would also interact with close family and friends and encourage them to pool in as well. She thoroughly enjoyed buying groceries, diapers and milk powder for the homeless and orphaned children with her debit card and kept accounts, always!

Mandira had initially proposed to go to visit children in Uganda as she was totally fascinated by Mrs. Trudy Marshall's philanthropic work in Uganda. Mrs. Marshall was her childhood hero and one incredible person. As I got to know Mrs. Marshall, she was my hero, too. For more information on Mrs. Marshall's work, please visit:

http://www.librariesoflove.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=9&Itemid=9


The impact of Mrs. Marshall's work on Mandira's thoughts knew no bounds. She spent days trying to convince her dad and me to take her to Uganda. We had to sit her down and explain that it will be difficult for us to follow through on her trip to Uganda as we needed time to put together a team and come up with a plan. She pondered for a while and then came back to me requesting that I take her on a philanthropic mission to India. Her dad was pleased and offered to sponsor our entire trip to Chennai, India in February' 2006. Mandira was 9 years old at that time.

Our mission to India was phenomenal; we visited with orphan children, tsunami victims, the poor and the homeless. Mandira convinced her grandmother to have large containers of food to be made at home and insisted on spending hours giving bowls of food away to the poor on the streets, in Chennai, India. It was a totally new and enlightening experience for me. I felt I had done and understood more during that time than I ever did growing up in India. I was soon motivated to be involved in a mission larger than myself and could not wait to share my experiences with the larger community around me. The communication that transpired in these conversations somehow got me to understand the bigger picture and realize the needs of Non Governmental Organizations.

It was at this time, that I found yet another very inspiring person, Sravish Sridhar, who not only shared our passion but had innovative thoughts in this area. Sravish had helped NGOs over the years and was also successfully growing a high-tech company the same time. Sravish and I spent tireless days and nights, thinking of ways to create a new non-profit social enterprise that could help non governmental organizations, increase their capacity and get access to resources they need to grow. It impressed me immensely that he had very interesting ideas on leveraging emerging technologies to address issues facing the NGOs. Slowly, all the pieces started falling into place and we decided to get the ball rolling on a new venture to help them -http://www.weflap.org/. That's how we got started!