Vikram Needs A Car!
Donation protected
He supports his wife, his son, his sister's son, his mother, and his mother's nephew...all on the fluctuating, minimal money he earns as an auto-rickshaw driver in Hospet, South India.
And Vikram has a heart of gold. He helps everyone who crosses his path, however he can.
Now we can help this exceptional young man gain a new, more productive life and realize his dream - of becoming a commercial taxi driver.
Vikram is a beloved brother to me, and to many of my friends/students who have been to India with me over the last two years. You can read the original post, below, to hear his story and how we met.
A year since this GoFundMe began and we saved Vikram's rickshaw, the auto-rickshaw business in Hospet is drying up.
Vikram makes - on an average day, working from 3 am to 9 pm - about 300 rupees, a little less than $10. During the high tourist season, he will average more like 1600 rupees - again working 12 hours or more - which comes out to about $25.
As a serious, brilliant, young man who supports 6 people and is the sole breadwinner for them all, Vikram is under a lot of stress and strain. He barely sees his wife, his son Niranjan, and the other two beautiful boys they care for.
All of this could change dramatically if he could buy a good solid modest car and start to earn better money consistently by driving as a taxi service for hire.
Our travel group to India this September 2017 took up a collection to help Vikram put a down-payment on the car of his dreams.
Now that he has paid it, he has exactly one month to deliver the rest of the money to the car owner or forfeit the down payment. It's a huge risk for him - but sometimes a leap of faith is what's needed to make a dream come true.
There is no way that he could ever earn the $5600 he needs to purchase the car...(last year's fundraiser made about $1500 for his mom's hospital bills so the total goal of this fundraiser is $7500, including the previous donations from 2016)....so that's where we come in!
The clock is ticking! Please, please, donate, share, post, tweet, whatever you can to get the word out.
Vikram and his family's life will change forever if we can raise this sum by October 25th!!!!!
Can we do this? Of course!
Will it mean a world of difference in the lives of six people? YES!
So, please - let's do this! By buying Vikram a car, we are buying his whole family a new chance at a better life.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for your support and your love. Together we can create miracles!
Here is the original GoFundMe text from 2016: My friend Vikram is in dire financial trouble. So is his whole family. This past summer, I was leading a spiritual tour to power places in South India, when a beautiful member of my tour fell on the slippery river rocks near Hampi, and broke her wrist. It was monsoon season, and as we walked through the streets of the nearby town, Hospet, in search of an orthopedic surgeon who could set her rapidly swelling wrist, a downpour began that forced us to seek shelter under a building overhang. With so much rain, we couldn't really keep walking!
And that's when we met Vikram. This young man driving his auto-rickshaw appeared as if out of nowhere, and offered us a lift. We were so grateful! We climbed in the rickshaw and went to the doctor's office -- only to find that the doctor wasn't there! (It was lunch time.) Vikram noticed the phone number on the office sign, and called the doctor, telling him we had an emergency. The doctor came back immediately (once the rain stopped), and set my friend Linda's wrist. We chatted a lot, waiting for the doctor, and we found out quite a lot about Vikram's brilliance, including an amazingly articulate command of English! and his kind heart. And it wasn't just with us - he is so popular among Western tourists visiting Hampi that one English client even set up a Facebook fan page for Vikram!
This is especially meaningful given the current situation in and around Hampi, where many of the rickshaw drivers are corrupt and unkind, offering to sell drugs to their Western tourist clientele, and giving the whole profession a bad name in the area.
Vikram is an honest, conscientious rickshaw driver and a knowledgeable guide to the various sites at Hampi. As such, he is a kind of a dying breed in his profession. While Linda's bone was being set -- and this took quite a bit of time! -- Vikram was patiently waiting outside the office for us, instead of driving around looking for other fares. When we needed to go to a pharmacy to fill a prescription (for pain meds), Vikram kindly helped Linda back into his rickshaw, to sit comfortably, and then came with me to the pharmacy. He realized that few people in the town speak effective English, and was worried that maybe I wouldn't be understood, and would need some help.
It was there in the pharmacy line that Vikram and I realized we have the same birthday. From that moment on, I have felt that he is a kind of younger brother to me.
When I paid him -- fairly, I thought -- for the many hours that he spent with us (when he could've gotten other business in the town during that time), Vikram literally wept with gratitude, and thanked me for helping to sustain his whole family that day. We hugged, took selfies, and I knew we would be friends for life.
Since then, Vikram and I have stayed in touch via Facebook, chatting occasionally about this and that. He takes care of his whole (extended) family, including a wife and child, as well as his mother, who is quite ill. This past week, it turns out that Vikram's mom is so sick (with diabetes, a common problem in South India) that she is having trouble walking, and needs to go to the hospital for care, for her legs. He simply doesn't have the funds to take care of her needs, and he is desperate. He is thinking to sell his rickshaw - his only source of income! - in order to pay for his mom's hospital care.
What on earth can he do, then, to make a living, having sold his rickshaw? I shudder to think. When I asked him how much money he thinks the hospital will require, Vikram responded with a total that is less than $1000 U.S.
A whole family's life can be wrecked -- for years to come -- over a sum of money that isn't staggering by Western standards. Then I started thinking about ways to help Vikram and his family -- and remembered crowd-funding! I would like to support this brave young man and his family, to help them have a chance at creating a life that is sustainable and not fear-based, by not only paying for his mom's hospital care, but to provide some financial ease so that if any other on-going care is required for his mother, he doesn't have to worry constantly, or consider selling his one and only source of income.
I would like to raise $3500 to help sustain Vikram and his family, so that they can live free from the constant struggle and fear of financial ruin for the next year -- and he can develop his rickshaw business into even more of a force for good in Hospet and Hampi, India.
To me, this is a living embodiment of the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam: "He who heals one soul heals the world entire."
We can't always solve the world's problems, or take care of whole nations-full of people in trouble, but I believe that we can take care of the people in front of us who are suffering -- that each individual act of care somehow adds up in the global balance sheet, and ripples outward in unknown ways, for the greater good.
Vikram and his family are in front of me, right now, and I can't take care of their financial needs alone.
I hope that his story will move your heart the way it's moved mine, and that together we can help this beautiful man and his family have an easier time of it, once his mother's immediate health crisis is addressed. ANY donation, of any amount, will make an enormous difference -- and send a powerful message of support and love to Vikram. (I haven't told him, yet, that I'm doing this fund-raiser for him.)
I want to bless and surprise him with the message that Western people who've never met him can also be part of the love and support in his life... in the same way that his immense kindness to everyone he drives around in his rickshaw is a tremendous gift of the very human values we all prize: love, compassion, and kindness. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, on behalf of Vikram and his family.
And Vikram has a heart of gold. He helps everyone who crosses his path, however he can.
Now we can help this exceptional young man gain a new, more productive life and realize his dream - of becoming a commercial taxi driver.
Vikram is a beloved brother to me, and to many of my friends/students who have been to India with me over the last two years. You can read the original post, below, to hear his story and how we met.
A year since this GoFundMe began and we saved Vikram's rickshaw, the auto-rickshaw business in Hospet is drying up.
Vikram makes - on an average day, working from 3 am to 9 pm - about 300 rupees, a little less than $10. During the high tourist season, he will average more like 1600 rupees - again working 12 hours or more - which comes out to about $25.
As a serious, brilliant, young man who supports 6 people and is the sole breadwinner for them all, Vikram is under a lot of stress and strain. He barely sees his wife, his son Niranjan, and the other two beautiful boys they care for.
All of this could change dramatically if he could buy a good solid modest car and start to earn better money consistently by driving as a taxi service for hire.
Our travel group to India this September 2017 took up a collection to help Vikram put a down-payment on the car of his dreams.
Now that he has paid it, he has exactly one month to deliver the rest of the money to the car owner or forfeit the down payment. It's a huge risk for him - but sometimes a leap of faith is what's needed to make a dream come true.
There is no way that he could ever earn the $5600 he needs to purchase the car...(last year's fundraiser made about $1500 for his mom's hospital bills so the total goal of this fundraiser is $7500, including the previous donations from 2016)....so that's where we come in!
The clock is ticking! Please, please, donate, share, post, tweet, whatever you can to get the word out.
Vikram and his family's life will change forever if we can raise this sum by October 25th!!!!!
Can we do this? Of course!
Will it mean a world of difference in the lives of six people? YES!
So, please - let's do this! By buying Vikram a car, we are buying his whole family a new chance at a better life.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for your support and your love. Together we can create miracles!
Here is the original GoFundMe text from 2016: My friend Vikram is in dire financial trouble. So is his whole family. This past summer, I was leading a spiritual tour to power places in South India, when a beautiful member of my tour fell on the slippery river rocks near Hampi, and broke her wrist. It was monsoon season, and as we walked through the streets of the nearby town, Hospet, in search of an orthopedic surgeon who could set her rapidly swelling wrist, a downpour began that forced us to seek shelter under a building overhang. With so much rain, we couldn't really keep walking!
And that's when we met Vikram. This young man driving his auto-rickshaw appeared as if out of nowhere, and offered us a lift. We were so grateful! We climbed in the rickshaw and went to the doctor's office -- only to find that the doctor wasn't there! (It was lunch time.) Vikram noticed the phone number on the office sign, and called the doctor, telling him we had an emergency. The doctor came back immediately (once the rain stopped), and set my friend Linda's wrist. We chatted a lot, waiting for the doctor, and we found out quite a lot about Vikram's brilliance, including an amazingly articulate command of English! and his kind heart. And it wasn't just with us - he is so popular among Western tourists visiting Hampi that one English client even set up a Facebook fan page for Vikram!
This is especially meaningful given the current situation in and around Hampi, where many of the rickshaw drivers are corrupt and unkind, offering to sell drugs to their Western tourist clientele, and giving the whole profession a bad name in the area.
Vikram is an honest, conscientious rickshaw driver and a knowledgeable guide to the various sites at Hampi. As such, he is a kind of a dying breed in his profession. While Linda's bone was being set -- and this took quite a bit of time! -- Vikram was patiently waiting outside the office for us, instead of driving around looking for other fares. When we needed to go to a pharmacy to fill a prescription (for pain meds), Vikram kindly helped Linda back into his rickshaw, to sit comfortably, and then came with me to the pharmacy. He realized that few people in the town speak effective English, and was worried that maybe I wouldn't be understood, and would need some help.
It was there in the pharmacy line that Vikram and I realized we have the same birthday. From that moment on, I have felt that he is a kind of younger brother to me.
When I paid him -- fairly, I thought -- for the many hours that he spent with us (when he could've gotten other business in the town during that time), Vikram literally wept with gratitude, and thanked me for helping to sustain his whole family that day. We hugged, took selfies, and I knew we would be friends for life.
Since then, Vikram and I have stayed in touch via Facebook, chatting occasionally about this and that. He takes care of his whole (extended) family, including a wife and child, as well as his mother, who is quite ill. This past week, it turns out that Vikram's mom is so sick (with diabetes, a common problem in South India) that she is having trouble walking, and needs to go to the hospital for care, for her legs. He simply doesn't have the funds to take care of her needs, and he is desperate. He is thinking to sell his rickshaw - his only source of income! - in order to pay for his mom's hospital care.
What on earth can he do, then, to make a living, having sold his rickshaw? I shudder to think. When I asked him how much money he thinks the hospital will require, Vikram responded with a total that is less than $1000 U.S.
A whole family's life can be wrecked -- for years to come -- over a sum of money that isn't staggering by Western standards. Then I started thinking about ways to help Vikram and his family -- and remembered crowd-funding! I would like to support this brave young man and his family, to help them have a chance at creating a life that is sustainable and not fear-based, by not only paying for his mom's hospital care, but to provide some financial ease so that if any other on-going care is required for his mother, he doesn't have to worry constantly, or consider selling his one and only source of income.
I would like to raise $3500 to help sustain Vikram and his family, so that they can live free from the constant struggle and fear of financial ruin for the next year -- and he can develop his rickshaw business into even more of a force for good in Hospet and Hampi, India.
To me, this is a living embodiment of the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam: "He who heals one soul heals the world entire."
We can't always solve the world's problems, or take care of whole nations-full of people in trouble, but I believe that we can take care of the people in front of us who are suffering -- that each individual act of care somehow adds up in the global balance sheet, and ripples outward in unknown ways, for the greater good.
Vikram and his family are in front of me, right now, and I can't take care of their financial needs alone.
I hope that his story will move your heart the way it's moved mine, and that together we can help this beautiful man and his family have an easier time of it, once his mother's immediate health crisis is addressed. ANY donation, of any amount, will make an enormous difference -- and send a powerful message of support and love to Vikram. (I haven't told him, yet, that I'm doing this fund-raiser for him.)
I want to bless and surprise him with the message that Western people who've never met him can also be part of the love and support in his life... in the same way that his immense kindness to everyone he drives around in his rickshaw is a tremendous gift of the very human values we all prize: love, compassion, and kindness. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, on behalf of Vikram and his family.
Organizer
Alx Uttermann
Organizer
Los Angeles, CA