“We rise by lifting others.”

Robert ingersoll

I remember sitting in my college room, writing at my desk when I hear a knock on the door. My roommate is on her bed watching some show I knew she will explain to me later and she looks up at me.
“Are you expecting someone?” She asks. I shake my head. She seems to think for a moment before she gets up and opens the door. In our doorway, I see a scrawny looking boy. He looks about 10 and wore a pair of worn out shorts and no shoes. My heart flares up. He greets my roommate and asks for money. “What do you want the money for?” I ask him. “Books for school,” he says. I tell him to go home and come back the next day. That was, for me, the beginning of Tapatsidwa Foundation, a charity group aimed at improving the quality of life for Malawians.

In 2 weeks, my roommate and I had raised enough money to buy him and 26 other kids, books, soaps, writing materials, sanitary products for the girls and other essential items. We got private donations from wellwishers and added the deficit, and this was at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

College seems like a lifetime ago.

I will admit, I did not do much after that as I focused more on trying to get registered and mapping out the charity group itself. It’s been almost a year since I left school and Tapatsidwa Foundation needs to do what I always meant it to do, help people. I don’t have every detail strewn about the structure itself but I feel that should not be a limiting factor in its works. Helping others doesn’t require a manual, just enough heart to give back into the universe.
Here is a few things on my 2023 #GivingBack list:

Organise a blood drive

Yes, this seems a bit daunting for me but I am more than willing to get all the help I need to see it through . Organising a blood drive has been on my list for while and I feel I am in a space that will allow me to follow through with it. Just me, an organising committee and people willing to donate blood. I am ready!

The question is: why a blood drive? The answer is helping people can’t always be monetary but also through the things we have and can afford to share. I hope people will come in their numbers for this and help save lives. It may not be someone you know but it is someone, who in that moment, desperately needs your help.

Donate to a hospital ward

I am a person rooted in the medical profession and working in a government hospital for my student internship I got to see first hand where a helping hand is very much needed. Supplies that can be termed small but would mean something for the people on the receiving end. I have had this one in the barrel for a while and with proper planning and of course, the resources, a few lives can be changed. In the words of Mother Theresa,

Donate to an orphanage

Clothes, shoes, books, blankets etc. all can be given to those people who need them. Privileges that are showered to us in abundance and somehow we overlook. Taking your time to say “here, you can have this.”

I always say, giving comes from the heart, be it items, knowledge, an invaluable…it all starts from the want of someone else’s well-being. Seeing someone smile and experience joy from your actions is indescribable.

That’s what I have planned out this year and hopefully, there will be more. More people willing to help and more people helped.
One act of kindness ripples through more than the life of the person you helped, the change echoes. A life changed, a story changed and a trajectory changed. We are all sums of random acts of kindess of strangers and I am one to attest to this, the healing and helping hand of strangers in moments of despair and sadness.

They say the flutter of butterfly wings can cause a hurricane and in some way, we are all testament to that. I will be collaborating and partnering with people on these, knowing I can’t wear every hat and understanding that I lack in certain areas. Something about dream work.

Ideas are welcome through my email or the comment section, and I do hope and want to hear your thoughts, questions and comments.

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

AesoP

Helping others doesn’t require a manual, just enough heart to give back into the universe.

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