The Rising World Foundation (RWF) is a not-for-profit charitable organisation dedicated to relieving the impact of Covid-19 on India’s most vulnerable communities. Marina Shaikh, Founder of The Rising World Foundation & Nandini Singh Jhabua, Communications Director of The Rising World Foundation recently joined NewsX on its special series NewsX India A-List to speak on how they helped thousands of people across India during the second wave of pandemic.
Marina, an experienced social organiser and philanthropist with international experience began the conversation and said “I was in Brussels since 2017 when I found this organisation and it was my work with the international development committee in the European Parliament that actually gave me much understanding of what kind of work I wanted to do basically. I did a lot of public service projects and worked a lot with the international government. But I also realized that I wanted to come back and serve the people of my own country and hence The Rising World Foundation was formed.”
Nandini Singh Jhabua, Communications Director of The Rising World Foundation threw light on their collaboration and said “Marina and I belong to Madhya Pradesh, our families are two generation’s friends and we literally grown up together. We both always liked community service as children. I remember we used to always plan that we’re going to do something and serve a community in a way that we wanted to, especially to the needy, to the marginalised community.”
Through her work with Marina and the RWF, Nandini hopes to combine her two greatest passions: her family’s connection to tribal art forms and giving back to the community. Talking about how the foundation operated and helped the community at large, Marina said “The rural is our target. Rural communities in Madhya Pradesh is what we have been targeting and recently we have started with a fundraiser for oxygen supplies in Madhya Pradesh.”
“We have been working on that lately as we got lot of calls from lot of villages that we have been working in for the past whole year. We started a fundraiser with Milaap. We hope lot more people can contribute to this cause and you know help the state,” Marina added.
Nandini Singh Jhabua elaborated more on the working of RWF and said “We have been working for the past year and a half ever since Marina started the NGO in 2015. The pandemic hit us and in that time we weren’t sure how would we start, we were immediately started relief works. Between Marina and I, we covered 5 different states along Madhya Pradesh.”
“It was amazing the kind of work we have done along with drives including the educational, agricultural drives and breast cancer awareness drive. It was really nice that we were able to reach out to almost over a lakh of people with information, mask sanitizers, hygiene kits, so I think we have made a tremendous difference in these five states,” Nandini added.
Marina told us about her on ground experiences during the devastating second wave of Covid pandemic, “It’s extremely intimidating going to hospitals and distributing to their families, food and hygiene kits for women. It’s been very intimidating with whole new black fungus. I mean I’m glad that we’re doing whatever we can and yeah it’s very tough for us. We are trying our best to save lives and I take pride and say it’s alright to just go out. Somebody has to do it.”
Talking about their ongoing fundraiser, Marina said “We have people who supported us from across the world. We have received about 20 lakhs and our target was 30 lakhs. We have already donated 26 oxygen concentrators to various districts in Madhya Pradesh.”
On a concluding note, Nandini Singh Jhabua mentioned how one can reach out and support the ongoing cause of RWF “They can DM us and follow our The Rising World Foundation. We hope every individual put the tools they need to thrive. The sky is vast the opportunities are limitless. Come out and support us in order to help us in every way to save lives, as many as we can.”
