AgasthyaSpl

The activities of our team around the Aadi amavasai festival in KMTR have increased, from merely campaigning against the use of plastic to monitoring the impact on wildlife, all which demands resources.

As a part of annual ritual of fund-raising for this effort, I approached a few malls in Bangalore for permission to put up a stall during a weekend just before the festival. The Forum Mall readily agreed while all other malls had refused.

The stall was set up on Sunday with the help of volunteers. It was quite interesting to sit and watch people’s attitude towards a cause related to the environment. Diverse people walked by our stall, there were those who would look at our stall and just walk away and those who would come over check out the products and leave. Worst of all were the ones who waste our time asking questions but buy nothing and ones who ask us for products that we did not have. This would make me wonder why people fail to understand that this is not a commercial venture and hence cannot cater to their tastes. Some would even suggest designs that they preferred. However, it was heartening to see that there were some people, especially students, who couldn’t afford to buy, our products but would give a small donation, and some who picked up every product we had just because it was for a cause. However, we would be disappointed when people would listen to us and just walk away without even offering a small donation. Then immediately, our spirits would be lifted when some sweet soul would empathise with us. I would still say that tiger burns bright seeing volunteer’s energy mainly kids from Bangalore schools who worked very hard convincing the visitors to fund our cause by buying products. Having said that, by the end of the day we had sold most of the products we had carried.

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