Freedom Lecture

Freedom Lecture

Publication: Samanvaya News Room

URL: Freedom Lecture

PRACTICE OF ABUNDANCE AND LOVE ESSENTIAL TO ENJOY FREEDOM AND INITIATE SOCIAL CHANGE URGES Dr. SAILAKSHMI

12th Aug, 2011, Chennai: “The most important parts of social change and action can emerge from voluntary action and such voluntary action has to be driven by love and a sense of abundance”, urged Dr. Sailakshmi, founder – trustee of Ekam Foundation while delivering the 8th Samanvaya Freedom Lecture.

Dr. Sailakshmi through Ekam has been providing support services to the poorest new born children in the state whose parents cannot afford better medical facility or drugs. Ekam provides the new-borns with the best available medical attention to ensure that the neo-natal deaths are minimized in the state. Ekam has contributed significantly in educating and supporting the system and believes in working with the government machinery. Recently Ekam has also recruited and trained nurses for the neo-natal care units in the state as part of the NRHM, along with the State health department, Dr. Sai mentioned.

Dr. Sai has travelled to over 21 government hospitals across the state in training the nurses apart from setting up local civil-society support groups for better treatment to the new born. She said that the neo-natal mortality rate has come down by almost 50% per cent in most of the hospitals since. The local civil-society groups too have been set-up to provide monitoring and support services to the GM neo-natal units. In Tiruvallur, engineering college students have come forth to regularly monitor and volunteer in GH, in Vellore it is local NGOs and in Ramnad, teachers. Such voluntary participation from different cross sections of society is what drives her efforts, Sai said.

She spoke of her own journey in discovering the health problems the poor in the country faced and how care and love can make a major difference. Mentioning that when good efforts for a social cause are taken by individuals, support in abundance arrives voluntarily, she pointed out her own example and that of Ekam and how abundant support had arrived for what she called otherwise an ‘unsustainable’ model of rendering service.

The lecture was Presided over by Smt. Shreya , ED, Malladi Drugs & Pharmaceuticals. The Chief Consultant of Samanvaya, Mr. Ramasubramanian welcomed the gathering and updated the audience about the development activities across the state that Samanvaya has undertaken in the last year. He said that the freedom lecture was an effort to bring a grassroot worker each year to talk about their idea of freedom to the audience in Chennai. The Vote of thanks was proposed by Sri. Rangarajan, national coordinator of Rejuvenate India Movement, co-organizer of the programme.