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.