Share Goodness making a difference

Although its goal is to make a positive difference in the lives of the less fortunate, Share Goodness is a charitable organisation with a difference. Its members don’t aspire to achieve their goal through raising funds or donating money. At least, not through their own activities and events. Instead, the very young members of the organisation attempt to make good use of an all-important resource—human resource. The organisation’s mandate is to connect the people who want to help others with the people and organisations who need the help. “We realised that in T&T there are a lot of charitable organisations but people don’t really know about them,” said Share Goodness president Deepak Lall in an interview with the T&T Guardian. “Our goal is to make sharing a whole lot easier. Our focus is marketing. We aim to connect the haves with the have-nots” said Lall.

 

Lall, 24, insists there are a lot of people in T&T who want to help others, especially young people, but don’t know how to mobilise themselves to action. He says this is why Share Goodness targets people in the 17- to 30-year age group, and why its ten members are also in their mid-20s. Time, talent and things are all the organisation asks for from its members and from anyone willing to give, he says. “If we decide to paint a house for somebody all we’d ask for is the time to do it, the talent and maybe a bucket of paint,” Lall said. The group became a registered organisation last June, and has already had several calls to action, among them blood drives. “We discovered that T&T has one-third less blood in reserve than it should,” said Lall. He said in the group’s first drive, they helped acquire 40 pints of blood, with 34 first-time donors. The second yielded 52 pints with 32 first-time donors.

 

The group had its third drive in May. “We also visited the paediatric ward in the hospital (Wendy Fitzwilliam Paediatric Hospital) just to play with the children there and cheer them up,” Lall said. The group has also been donating its time, talent and things to a home for abused girls close to its Chaguanas home base. “What we are doing is modern and it’s fun and we do get a lot of positive feedback from the people who involve themselves with us,” Lall said. He said the group has started to go to different parts of the country to build a network of people interested in giving back. The organisation has also begun engaging students from secondary schools in T&T to encourage them to want to help others. “We want to have Share Goodness reps in the schools and promote awareness  of our organisation. It should get to the point that if there is something needed to be done in Diego Martin, we would have a group there ready to help out.” So how did these young people connect to form Share Goodness? Lall says he and his friends were just looking for something else to do besides liming and partying. “It is only so often you could go to 51 (Degrees) and party. T&T doesn’t have that much to do in terms of entertainment,” said Lall.