Child patients reading the letters written by the students of the Need base India NGO in the event held on account of Friendship Day at the Mazumdar Shaw Medical Center.
| Photo Credit: Atiya Firdos
Milaap, a crowd-funding platform, initiated a letter-writing initiative for children affected by cancer and children from underprivileged backgrounds.
The two-day event marking friendship day was held in collaboration with the Narayana Hospital and Daakroom at the Mazumdar Shaw Medical Center (Unit of Narayana Health), on June 21 and 22.
On the first day of the event, 25 students who are part of the Need Base India NGO, all aged between 13 to 15 years, wrote letters.
On the second day a student, posing as a postman, distributed the letters to the children in the oncology ward of the medical centre.
“I felt very happy while writing the letter; I wrote it with the hope that they recover soon,” said Asha B., a student at Need Base India.
Kavitha N.T., education coordinator at Need Base India, told The Hindu that the initiative was held so that the children feel connected to each other.
“Our NGO works for vulnerable children and these children miss emotional relationships. Therefore, through Milaap, we tried to reach out to kids in the Narayana Hospital so that both groups feel socially connected.”
Speaking to The Hindu, Dr. Sunil Bhat, director and clinical lead of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation, Narayana Health City, said that non-medical activities such as performances by the children, celebration of festivals and ‘make-a-wish’ programmes are regularly organised at the hospital.
“We try to make it holistic so that everything is taken care of. Along with the core-medical treatment, we also have a strong psycho-emotional component to the treatment which is also equally important to the child patient as well as the family,” he said.
Daakroom, a Delhi-based initiative which holds letter-writing festivals, highlighted the importance of preserving letter-writing as a form of communication.
“Our focus is on inspiring people to embrace authentic connections through the power of the pen,” said Shivani Mehta and Harnehmat Kaur, co-founders of Daakroom.