Orphans Deserve Better Living

When one looks at the orphan children – usually, their unkempt hair and clothes, eyes defying hidden trauma, conscience bereft of the feeling of being someone, the inability to express material desire, want of love and care, one wouldn’t delve deep into introspection on the social crisis they go through.

And for many better privileged people, spending time in orphanage means a reality check with oneself.

On a visit to an orphanage, a Hyderabad-based techie Abdul Rahman, who heads Global Sales and Marketing Operations at a leading IT company, found it actionable that unhygienic clothes were visual indicators of the orphan status of these children, and that, in another orphanage, one child had to wait to get plate used by his fellow orphan, washed to eat food turn by turn.

Abdul Rahman quickly realized that these orphans deserved more than they were getting, and pitched the desire to help these orphans in his professional circles, triggering his friends and business colleagues. Adopting an orphan meant sponsoring at least ten thousand rupees per child for a year. So, he founded Helping 2 Hands – The AR Foundation, as an entity that would connect donors with orphanages to benefit them directly.

In most cases, even the funds from donors are directly credited to the beneficiary’s orphanage, and Abdul Rahman’s foundation acts as the facilitator, analyzing the whole process, and following up on developments.

He has since been, engineering social projects to connect orphanages to donors, voluntarily acting as a bridge between orphans in various caretaking centers and donors from across different verticals and social groups. Despite being the Vice President of Global Sales at Netmetric Solutions – a leading IT company, he uses his resources and weekends for the betterment of these children, without bias of religion, caste or creed. Most of these beneficiaries, both girls and boys, are aged between 4 and 15 years, and Abdul Rahman’s foundation supplements their education, healthcare and more.

Having lead trainers with big labels like Microsoft and CISCO, Abdul Rahman spends most of his weekends working on child education, women empowerment, career counselling for students, mid-aged people, and assisting orphanages make lives easier for orphans. His efforts started getting recognition after the organization won several awards in various social welfare categories in 2016 and Abdul Rahman was honoured with the Change Maker Philanthropist 2017 and Best Continuous Support to Special schools award in 2017, Best Philanthropist Award in 2016 by various private organizations.

His foundation through the 51 Smiles project has adopted 33 students so far, and 117 students totally from various schools across Telangana and Bengaluru states, visiting over 56 schools and interacting with 21,346 students till date. As Abdul Rahman puts it “many of us are blessed to have our parents to look after; these orphans need love, attention and someone to look after them, unfiltered and unconditionally.”

“And people need to understand this, and change the way they look at or treat orphans”, he concludes.