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We believe in giving back to society: Kanika Dewan & Karan Kaushish, Founders, The Good Deed Foundation

In an exclusive conversation with NewsX for its special series NewsX India A-List, Kanika Dewan & Karan Kaushish, Founders, The Good Deed Foundation talked about their journey in the field of social work and shared the tireless work done by their foundation during pandemic.

Kanika Dewan & Karan Kaushish, Founders, The Good Deed Foundation, recently joined NewsX for an exclusive interview as part of the NewsX India A-List. The Good Deed Relief Foundation has worked tirelessly to assist everyone in Covid-19 during these challenging times. They’ve also launched a ration aid relief project, which has so far aided 738 households. They assist eight non-governmental organisations, seven Bastis, two orphanages, and three old-age homes, as well as anyone who contacts them.

Kanika Dewan began by recounting her experience working in the social welfare field, explaining, “I’m basically a doctor by profession, and I qualified from Manipal University which is Asia’s top five universities. And somewhere in the process of being and remaining a doctor, to giving back to society, we started this wonderful journey. To sum it up, basically an incredible journey of becoming a welfare rights activist and it’s not something that started because of a cause or reason. It just turned into a way of life. As I mentioned, that ‘s not a task to do. It’s just something that I believe in. It’s the warmth and the passion that I have. And I think it’s very important for everybody to understand what it means and what it feels like to be able to give back to society. And I think 10 years has been incredible, because for the last four years, I’m also the director with People for Animals India, which is India’s largest animal welfare organization.”

“During this pandemic, we worked a lot towards animal welfare. I think it’s been a chain reaction always from adopting NGOs every quarter to being the director with people or animals. Somewhere in the process, everything that to one thing led to each other. And yeah, so that’s how my 10 years have been in this sector,” continued Kanika. 

Speaking of the work done by the foundation during the second wave of Covid-19, Kanika mentioned, “The good Deed is a setup that came out of the era of pandemic between me and Karan sharing the same ideology. We did a lot of work for Covid relief last year as well. This year, was very different as the wave has hit home of a lot of people. It’s more oriented towards various initiatives, we have various verticals that we are working on.”

“We have provided food aid relief to Covid families free of charge, started a food aid initiative for providing healthy, nutritious fruits to underprivileged. We also have ventured into doing a drive of gratitude for frontline warriors which is our biggest venture so far. The biggest vertical in this initiative has been the Ration Aid a journey, where we are catering to about 1500 to 2000, kgs of Ration aid that we’re providing to all the partners that we’ve set up with, which is about eight NGOs and seven bastis and Aaganbaadi and orphanage three old age homes. And apart from that anybody who’s seeking then coming to us or Ration Aid need,” elaborated Kanika on the cause and work done by them so far in order to help people. 

Karan Kaushish explained to our viewers the idea behind starting this foundation and said “What got me started was I’ve always believed in giving back, I always had that sense of philanthropy or whatever you want to call it. I found that there is a huge need for people to actually unite, come together and then work together on efforts to actually make a difference. Kanika contacted me for some different fundraisers, which was again, for some sort of impact. At that point of time, I think when we were in London and then after that we shared the same sort of passion and the same thought process of giving back.”

“There are four pillars which now define our foundation, which is integrity, trust, measurability and impact. Kanika and I really want to make an impact and a big impact,” Karan added. 

When asked how can one volunteer or contribute in The Good Deed Relief Foundation, Kanika replied, “Since we have our various initiatives and everything is based on the number of mobilization and task forces that we have. There are various ways that people can actually associate themselves with us. Firstly, they can volunteer with us on ground. Second, they can work with us on the back end, because it’s a lot on some days, about 16-18 hours of back and forth calls in organizing, rationing and everything. Apart from that people can actually support us by giving us ration aid. Alternatively, if they cannot give us Ration, they can actually support our cause. We have a fundraiser going on on Ketto, they can actually support and sponsor a Ration kit. And yeah, so these are various ways in which people can help us with our initiatives.”

Karan concluded the conversation by elaborating “I think in the next five years, we would have actually become a household name and I believe that our foundation would instill so much passion in people that they will be giving back to themselves.”

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