Mr. J. M. Mehta - Chairman, The Bridge Trust.

Can you talk about inception of your organisation and your
involvement ?
The Bridge Public Charitable Trust was founded in 1996. I am Civil Engineer cum businessman. I am a Chairman of M/S J.M. Mehta Travel & Tour Co. Pvt. Ltd., which provides domestic as well as international travel and tour, services. I met with a severe accident and was being readied for Craniotomy - a major brain surgery. Seeing death of fellow patients, I felt that life has something much more than just earning money.

I decided that if I came out of this surgery without any damage to the brain, I would dedicate rest of my active life and resources to fight existing illiteracy, poverty and other evils in its wake, such as ill health, disease, ignorance and unemployment. The symbol of bridge came into being for bridging the wide gap that exists between the haves and have-nots. In this decision I was inspired by the dedicated work of Mother Teresa, whom I had the privilege of meeting with Dr. Owen Pinto.

The Bridge Trust was registered in 1996 and Mother was informed. She advised that we raise funds for the Haji Abdul Majid Memorial Public Trust Hospital located in Assam. After visit to the hospital I donated some amount. And Mother advised to continue good work at Bridge Trust.

As we started the trust in 1996 we got some money from abroad. We had some difficulty with the money, as we had not taken permission from the Home ministry for FCRA. To get official FCRA, it took lot of time. I was ignorant about laws, but ignorance is not an excuse.

I gave those 20 lakhs from abroad to the above-mentioned hospital that had FCRA, on recommendation of Mother Teresa.

Since money was transferred to the hospital through my account I faced many difficulties. And it took me around 3 years to get FCRA.

On programmes
The Bridge Trust is involved in charities in two ways - Funding and direct intervention. With our vision, we plan to consolidate funds received from various sources and utilise the same judiciously and wisely. We render financial assistance in various areas such as Visually challenged, hearing and speech impaired, physically and mentally challenged, healthcare for cancer/TB/HIV positive, leprosy control, women welfare, infant mortality, old age homes etc.

We have initiated eight Balwadis (pre primary schools of KG level) in eight villages. We fund Organisations working at grassroots level with limited resources and are doing good work. We are funding around 55 institutions. We first identify the cause, activity and assess organisation's own depth of involvement before committing any support.

Initially as I was unable to get money from abroad, I used my own personal money. I got about 8 lakhs rupees from various sources like Policy maturing, PPF etc and other 6 lakhs from other source so I had around 14 lakhs. It was quite a substantial amount. My family members are financially quite well off so they were not dependent on my money.

Without depriving them of anything, I utilised this money with their knowledge for charity. I use to attend many workshops, seminars, organisations and find out the need. After knowing the need I use to fund if they are doing good work. The financial support is either one time or on regular monthly basis subject to revision.

The present financial assistance ranges between Rs. 8 to 10 lakhs per annum. In Direct Intervention, Bridge has identified twelve adivasis (tribal) villages in the interior of village town of Kasara and three such villages in the interior of village town of Safale in Thane District of the State of Maharashtra.

Role of Corporates
We are an NGO because of our presence in the villages and presence in
50 - 55 NGOs we are aware of the requirements.

Many things can be done as India is a poor country and 250 million people are living under poverty line.

Corporates has good role to play. Every corporate can take up some responsibility through NGOs because it is not possible for all corporates to have their own trust or society unless they are big.

They can support NGOs which can make a huge difference. They have to see that the money is spent on the cause intended.

Monitoring and Evaluation
In Kasara we have our manager who is a qualified MSW.

We are in touch with him regularly on phone. My staff and I travel there often. We evaluate the project at regular intervals.

The fact that villagers can use the facilities that we have provided, shows the success of our project.

Whenever we go to the village, we see women drawing out water out of well. This gives us immense satisfaction.

Key achievements and recognitions
Key achievements are yet to come.

Though our presence in Kasara has been from four years, we have done 5 wells, one major dam having storage capacity of million litres.

This dam can be considered as our small achievement.

What are your future plans
Many things depend upon our finances. In philanthropy sky is the limit. Whatever one does is never sufficient.

We want to operate clothes bank as we are assured of clothes in good condition from Mumbai, Muscat, Dubai etc. We can distribute these clothes in villages with the help of Sarpanch.

There can be shoes bank, not expired medicine bank etc. We have purchased a land where we want to have community center. At this community center, people can come for marriages, lecture, or seminar.

We want to have community health centre with Doctors and Ambulance as our place is touching the highway. So many things can be done. We can provide water filters.

We can make 2000 water filters every year that can cater 2000 households and 2000 households means at least 15-20 villages. Each water filter costs Rs.400/- so total expense will be around 8-9 lakhs.

Communication strategies
We are thinking of two main strategies, one is to approach people through Internet. We have database of 700 email addresses.

Second is way is to make appeal through mail. We send our annual report and explain them major projects that we are going to undertake and why we need money.

We just request people to donate money. If people are interested we can go and meet them and show our catalogue giving full details with photographs.

We have three celebrities certifying our efforts, this creates more impact. With these strategies we do expect to get fund.

Once we get funds we'll start our work and will give feedback to our donors.

Do you expect media to play any role ?
Not at this stage. Once we do some good projects we'll call media to give us some publicity. We have faith in god and believe that if you do good work, funds will follow.

Anything you would like to say to the audience of IndianNGOs.com ?
IndianNGOs.com is doing good work. Keep it up!

- Madhavi Mehta
(Mumbai)