Life is the greatest test of all, but the only way we know is to keep striving harder and continue making our best effort to get better. Knowing fully well from the amazing feedback we have received every year, the tremendous pleasure, pride and inspiration that Soulfree’s gift boxes are providing for persons with spinal cord injury, we are committed to ensuring that the items in the box are useful and of the best quality. As we understand more about their needs through their requests, we keep adding new elements to optimise satisfaction.

This year our gift boxes will spread love, light and laughter in the lives of 154 beneficiaries, who have received gift boxes that will contain not only joy, but will also fulfil many medical and other hygiene requirements, apart from the usual sweet and savoury treats. Not only that, the women in our group will receive special goodies like a jewellery set. The value of every gift box is approximately Rs. 3000.

The journey towards the fulfilment of our mission was especially challenging this year as we faced tremendous obstacles along the journey. First of all, it required tremendous ground work from our dedicated team of volunteers to get all the individualised details including catheter size, updated address et cetera from the beneficiaries. This year there were many more people we wished to serve, consequently there was months of work to do. Despite feeling overwhelmed at times, this service is truly rewarding. So, it is our sincere prayer that we will be able to positively impact many more lives each year and improve their quality of life in a significant way.

There were also extraordinary difficulties in fulfilling the criteria set by the Postal Service of India, which is the only postal/courier service that guarantees Home Delivery to all the beneficiaries. In order to do so, we also purchased a special sewing machine for stitching the bags, an investment that will help us a great deal in the future as well.

Since we are sending out gifts to people who are wheelchair users and are immobile for the most part, we wished to ensure that the gifts are delivered right to their doorstep, instant of them having to travel or be dependent on others to pick up the gifts from courier offices. However, this entails that each registered parcel cost in excess of Rs. 150, but we think is worth it as it ensures the comfort of our beneficiaries.

As the number of beneficiaries has increased significantly this time, it took us quite a bit of effort to understand the requirements and purchase them. Despite our increasing needs, we were given full cooperation and tremendous support by Mr Abhay Mandot of Life Linx, Chennai and wish to express our deepest and attitude to him and his team for their patient service.

The highlight this year is the addition of specially made Soulfree T-shirts, that have been sponsored by Meridian Apparels. We wish to convey our special thanks to Mrs Mallika Venkhatramani, Mr Venkhatramani and Ms Usha Saraogi for fulfilling our humble request. We wish to express our deepest gratitude to all our generous donors, especially Mrs M. A. Vijayalakshmi for funding this auspicious project. Special thanks are also in order to Mr Karthick Ramasundaram, Vice President Sales at Franco Indian Pharma, Mumbai, Maharashtra and our dear family friend, Mr Murali Iyer from Visakhapatnam for sponsoring the Dexorange, a very potent iron tonic to keep anaemia at bay. Special Soulfree bags were provided by Mr Chandra Kumar Daga and his family – they are like my brothers, and I feel grateful to have their support.

I must also convey my heart-felt thanks to volunteers from the Rotaract Club of Thiruvannamalai Vegan (Suraj, Sivagurunathan, Thamizhazhagan), Gnanasekaran, my cricket students (Divya, Aruna Devi, Sujitha, Nandini and Revathi), the entire team of “VithaiKalam” led by Mr Prem and Mr Jayaraj, Dr Bijivin Raj and all the volunteers without whose hard work this project could not have been successful.

All our efforts have been made possible only because of your encouragement and blessing, and we hope that it will continue now and always. Please do spread the word about our work and if you wish to support our work please log onto our website www.Soulfree.org.