How Young Volunteer’s Organization is enabling the youth to contribute to causes they believe in

When Siddharth Ladasariya was studying in the US, he was impressed to see how young people were actively involved in outreach programmes and community initiatives. On his return to India, he found that the youth was not quite as involved with their communities and other social impact initiatives in their community. 

“Everyone wants to do something, but they don’t really end up doing anything because they either get tied up with their careers or they don’t know how they can contribute and get involved. That’s how a group of us friends brainstormed and came up with a structure where the youth could contribute.” 

“The Mumbai-based Young Volunteer’s Organization (YVO) was created where people could make a monthly contribution of as little as $5 a month. But we are looking for a lifetime commitment. That’s the only way we can make a difference,” says Siddharth. 

Since it was founded in 2015, YVO, which now has a team of 45 volunteers, has worked with over 74 NGOs supporting sustainable causes like education, skilling, women empowerment, water conservation, etc. 

“We strongly believe in the old notion that if you give a man fish, you feed him for a day and if you teach him to fish, you feed him for life,” says Siddharth.  

Pandemic relief

YVO recently initiated a COVID-relief fund to raise money for families impacted by the pandemic. 

“During Phase I of COVID, people were donating oxygen concentrators, cylinders, medical equipment, medicines, and so on. But then we realised that area was already seeing a lot of traction with contributions from NGOs, corporates, the government, and from outside India. We decided to look into an area which nobody had. A lot of families had lost their breadwinners. There were others where children lost both their mother and father,” says Siddharth.

The team then decided to focus on two areas. “Either we could rehabilitate them into some orphanage, which is a complex legal procedure, or leave them with their relatives like grandparents or uncles and aunts along with financial support to ensure that basic needs like food and education is taken care of,” he adds. 

YVO is now working with partner NGOs like Keshav Shrishti to plan and structure the disbursement of funds raised. In 2020, YVO raised Rs.1,06,53,592 from its donors.

Since it was founded, the organisation has helped over 21,673 distressed women; 23,090 underprivileged children/youth; 5,781 differently-abled people; 26,988 farmer family members; and 18,231 tribals.

Empowering youth

“We are also working with a couple of other YVO partner NGOs with an objective of identifying and creating maximum impact to support this cause. “We always keep our donor members posted on final disbursement decisions as soon as we have all the details in place and the fundraising campaign is closed,” says Siddharth. 

"We promise to share the details of every rupee collected and donated. We commit to ensure every rupee reaches the right hands in the right way." 

Siddharth says that YVO’s commitment to sustainable causes has seen sustained commitment from their donors as well.

“We have people who started by donating Rs 300 a month and now making monthly donations of up to Rs 1 lakh as we have established that trust factor with them.” He adds that YVO also supports its own volunteers with whatever cause they want to work on. 

“We have had people join us saying they want to raise funds for cancer. We encourage them to start something to support cancer patients. We started a chapter called ‘Love for Animals’. One of our volunteers lost her sister in an accident in the US. When they went there to collect her body, they realised she had pledged all her organs. So she started an organ donation drive named after her sister.”

“So, on one side, we are creating a money channel to be donated to NGOs and support NGOs working on sustainable causes, and on the other side, we are trying to get passion out of the youth to doing something good for the society, and provide them with a ready platform. We want you to know that we will help support you, and we will do it with you,” says Siddharth.

However, like the COVID Relief Fund, these are one-time activities and YVO’s monthly donations are not diverted to these drives. Going forward, YVO will continue to support its sustainable projects. 

YVO is also a zero admin cost operation, which means that whatever money is collected from donors goes to the NGOs in its entirety.

“We will never use it for running the operation. So we want to make it highly transparent. Everything, including our bank statements, and all the receipts of the donations and from the NGOs we contribute to are all available on our website. We want it to be extremely transparent,” says Siddharth.

Speaking about how YVO has grown, Siddharth says, “Initially, we were just friends and family, but as we grew, more professionals from various networks started joining us. We have a lot of startup founders and startup investors, doctors, lawyers, and people who studied at Harvard Business School volunteering with us now,” says Siddharth, adding that people who have achieved something themselves are ready to help others.

He says that their commitment to wanting to create social impact is one of the strongest pillars that YVO is built on.