Nursing Over 340 People And More To A Fulfilled Life - Erode, Tamil Nadu’s 24-year-old Manisha Krishnasamy
The life of Erode’s 24-year-old Manisha
Krishnasamy has come from being raised in a lower-middle class family. Her
father works his time as a butcher whereas her mother is a housewife. Manisha’s
dream has always been to pursue becoming a doctor or joining the army. In any
case, her dreams to achieve one of the two had been cut off due to financial
distress.
However, and yet she had another dream,
one to help the less fulfilled and destitute people along the streets. This
sensitivity towards other people has been the result of her having been a
witness to her father’s everyday hassle striving to do the best for his family.
She would help around at her father’s shop since early on which is how she
learned to empathize with the poor and less fortunate. And thus, to help, she
opted for a BSc degree in Nursing.
Now, a lecturer at Nanda College of
Nursing, Manisha started using the money she earned to feed the people on the
streets at least once in a day. This was a routine for her however it didn’t
seem to be enough as Manisha wished for these people to have a roof over their
head and be able to have timely meals every day.
With all this in mind, she started
working with an NGO and by the year 2018 she had started her own NGO, naming it
the ‘Jeevitham Foundation’. Her aim in all this was to help rebuild the lives
of the people out on the streets, whether they be poor, young, or old, people
will illnesses, mentally instable, and even drug addicts. She wanted to help
them all through the means of her NGO which serves people around the area of
Erode, Tamil Nadu. The foundation runs with the help of her own earnings along
with other donors.
This required her to get to know every
person’s basic needs and requirements. Along with providing ration, food
arrangements, there’s also physical exercises and employment training given to
them. In case that the people have families that can be contacted, they do so
and otherwise look for an alternative for them to work and earn their own
livelihood to help themselves and turn their lives around.
Manisha recalls the incident that led her
to start her NGO, it was when she came across a Facebook post of an 80-year-old
man who seemed to be malnourished. This unpleasant sight made her quite uneasy,
and she decided to reach out to the person who posted the picture and inquired
about the location of the man. She had been living in Trichy at the time and
rushed to Tanjavoor where the 80-year-old-man was. She also managed to transfer
him to a local old-age home before arriving to his aid.
The young lady has so far helped over 340
mental health patients, drug addicts, old and poor people on the streets so
far. As part of the Covid initiative, she also managed to acquire government
permission to distribute hand sanitizers, handwash, masks, rations and make
food arrangements for those on the streets.
As Covid hit, Manisha realized that even
though people indoors were relatively safe, the ones outside were at a higher
risk. She sought help from the commissioner and managed to rehabilitate 84
people in a school that had been shut down due to the pandemic. Setting up a
kitchen there was what came after, and the people helped cook meals for each
other with rations provided to them.
And thus, with enough training and help,
over the course of two months 54 of them were placed in jobs, the rest having
been placed either in shelter homes or had returned back to their families.
At the end of it all, Manisha has managed
to have another dream towards the betterment of mankind and this one is to
build a rehab center in the city and help and support the people therein to
find themselves small jobs to uplift their lives.
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