It is a festive and auspicious time of year again and we at Soulfree are filled with joy to convey our best wishes to you, along with updates of our work. I was just going through the note I had prepared for our April gift boxes and the tone was filled with such a sense of gratitude with the developments of our previous drive, but this one has left me completely speechless.

Our previous gift box drive spread joy in the lives of 184 beneficiaries and I was under the impression that it was a huge number, but within six months we have jumped to 292 beneficiaries. Our improved database management and call-back services are ensuring closer contact with our members and consequently enables us to reach out to more persons in need. It is noteworthy that the combined monthly income of the entire family of all our beneficiaries is less than ₹ 5000, which highlights the incredibly difficult circumstances in which they live. It also illumines the fact that spinal-cord injury is not a rare condition and the plight of those living in this condition in India is really dire.

Our gift boxes are comprised of 36 items this time. The complete list of items is provided in page 3 of this note. Even if I should say so myself, we have gained quite a bit of expertise in terms of reaching local manufacturers to purchase best quality goods at the most reasonable prices. This bi-year too we have received medicines from Himalaya Drug Company and Franco Indian Pharmaceuticals. These preventive and strengthening medicines are sure to improve the general health of all our beneficiaries.
We are extremely grateful to Mr Suresh T. And Mr Karthick R. for enabling our efforts to improve the quality-of-life of persons living with spinal-cord injury in India.

For the first time, we have used carton boxes for our gift box packaging and were ably advised by Dr. Sivakumar on how to go about the entire process. With our improved database management, we were also able to create a code that would automatically tell us the condition of each beneficiary and consequently, the contents of each gift box. It is an incredible innovation that makes the process more simple and straightforward at the packaging stage. We wish to express our deepest gratitude to Ms. Gayathri Santosh and Ms. K. Hemaamalini for their background support. It is only because of the amazing preparatory work and digitalisation of our processes that we were able to handle such an increase of our numbers.

There are two major breakthroughs we have achieved in this edition of our Gift Box Project. The first is that we have received our first Corporate Sponsorship for this project from Value Labs, a Hyderabad-based IT firm. We wish to extend our deepest gratitude to Ms Harini Rao, an ex-cricketer who has supported Soulfree from inception. Without such true philanthropy, Soulfree would not be able to fulfill the needs of those we wish to serve.

The second major breakthrough we were blessed to achieve is with the Postal Service. While we have always had trouble with them in the past, this time they have come through for us in an amazing way. With direction from Dr. Natarajan, Dean of the General Hospital in Thiruvannamalai, we were able to reach Mr L. Chandrasekaran, Superintendent of Post Offices, Tiruvannamalai Division, who solved all our problems. He also ensured cashless payments and free pickup of our packages, which is an awesome relief for us.

In yet another first, we have been able to capture our gift box project on video and shall be sharing a short documentary that will show our incredible journey. We wish to thank Mr Aravind Kesavan, Ms Aarthi Raghavendran and Mr Sudersanam for making this dream a reality.

The dedication of Mr Abhay Mandot of LifeLinx, our medical products and equipments supplier, goes over and beyond the call of duty and we are very lucky to have trustworthy and reliable people like him to support us. We also must thank Mr Viral Virani for sponsoring all our stickers that have come out so beautifully.

As always, above all it is our incredible volunteers we owe our most sincere and heart-felt gratitude to. This time our volunteers came from many parts of the world, people from varied socio-economic strata and belief systems, who all came together for our cause. It was truly an incredible sight to witness a Buddhist monk from New Zealand, Mr Tenzing sit for hours along with local students and others, to package gift boxes that are sure to spread joy in the lives of people struggling for survival due to paralysis. Some of our other volunteers are Ms Deepa Kamath, Mr Vinay Shivaraju, Ms Manjhulaa Narayanan and the young students who are my biggest blessings – Divya, Abhinaya, Sujitha, Suraj, Sivagurunathan, Tamilazhagan, Gnanasekar, Ganesh Kumar, Nishant, Hariharan and others. The sheer amount of work they have done is truly extraordinary and unbelievable. I am a perfectionist and a difficult person to work with, but I must say that I’m overwhelmed by their dedication and quality of work. As a mere witness, I just felt awe and gratitude, because their selfless work lets me experience the magnificence of the human spirit first-hand.

As I share our journey with you, it is as if you have travelled all the way with me. I thank you for reading patiently and encouraging me. I am forever grateful for your blessing and pray that it will continue always. If you find our work inspiring and interesting, please do share it with everyone around you. The world needs more hope, love and positive examples.

Yours most humbly,
Preethi S
01. 10. 2018
Thiruvannamalai