Earlier people clap for our work, now they come forward and support our work: Dr. Srushti

Dr. Srushti Saraf Sisodiya is a qualified physiotherapist who has always excelled academically and has been a committed physician. She founded Bwise Social Welfare Society, a NGO with the objective of expanding the offline reach of the “Women Ghar se Aasma Tak” initiative for the welfare of women and children. More than 53000 women from all across the world who are members of the NGO’s Facebook Community are regularly inspired and guided toward a happy existence by her.

Dr. Srushti talked to FounderLabs on her initiatives. Excerpts of her interview:

Where is the inspiration to start the NGO coming from? You are a doctor, what motivated you to start the NGO?

I would like to give the credit to my family specially to my dad who is also a doctor as well as a social worker. During my childhood days, I realized that he was more a social worker rather than a doctor. My father got lot of support from people during his struggle days as a student and people respected him a lot due to his passion to do work for society, people held his hand in his journey of social work and that took him a very long way. He retired as a CMO.  My father dedicated his life in the social work. My grandparents had also taken social work in a way that whenever they got any chance, they would not think of it a second time. My husband and my  children, who are by my side, have given me their unwavering support and are a rock for me.

I believe that it is due to the support of good people in society helped my father to become a successful man. So, from a very young age, I had made up my mind to do social work in my life. And because the medical profession is such a noble profession where we get an opportunity to help a lot of people every day, that is why I chose this profession. The health of a person is the real gem rather than wealth. So, if we worked towards that, it would make people healthier. Our society will automatically grow and be a better society.

 What makes this project unique?

I was of the opinion that when a woman leaves her maternal home, that appreciation, care and love, that she was used to get missed. So, keeping that in mind, we thought, what should we do to keep these women happy, How can these women become happy and grow in their lives? So, we decided to build a community for them and launched a Facebook book page. These women come together and help each other as a community. So that they do not have to face any obstacle or they do not make excuses for their lives. We are a group of more than 50,000 women in that group, and we all work together. Obviously, these women are from across the country, and we work together towards the development of society. And well, our own self-well-being and self-love so that these women can stay happy. I need a good life. We do not believe in any discrimination based on caste, creed, gender or politics. We treat everyone equal and it  is only about humanity and helping humans and growing.

How you inspired the women to join Facebook community. Kindly share few learnings?

We started the journey with around 100 women. Me, my co-sisters along with our admin team members worked around this and we took only those women who had good leadership qualities so they could join more people or more women in our group.

So being part of the NGO, our NGO i.e. BYU Women’s Welfare Society and the Facebook page is Bwise, so we always believe that working hard towards the success. We never believe in numbers we believe that it was just the work that was important for us. It started with the chain reaction and people bring their friends and relatives who are willing to work with us, and now we have so many women working with us who want to bring change in society. In our Facebook group, there are not only women, there are daughters, daughter-in-laws, and their in-laws there. So, when we started talking about societal issues, they began to become happier, and her in-laws and parents became kinder to them. They understand her more and now this change is slowly coming to these women and their families. So, this is the change we are bringing up. So, like that, all those in-laws and women started working towards society and the betterment of society, and we now work towards the welfare of all.

When you started this journey, there would have been lot of hurdles or challenges that you faced. So, what were those challenges?

While working on this NGO, many people around me obviously asked, “What are you working on?” It is so time-consuming, and how are you going to manage your house and your profession? It is a medical profession, so you should focus on that more than anything else. Since, I began working on this group, there isn’t a single day I haven’t contributed to this, like I’ve not taken any leave till date. Family also brings you into the spotlight, and things happen that cause people to ask, But I have taken it into my pride that I will bring this into the light and show people how good it is. Social Media also played a significant importance in our success.  There was a time when people were only clapping for us and now, they are supporting us from the core of their heart. What we have learnt is : First you get criticism, but when you prove yourself, that is converted into claps and cheers !!

You are also working on waste management, it’s indeed a unique initiative. So, how did you get inspire to work on waste management?

Since we joined Facebook and started our group years back, we used to work in Mumbai, We got many offers to go abroad, but we wanted to stay here and work for our country only. My husband got lot offers due to his excellent profile but we wanted to stay connected to the roots  and wanted to serve our country. People used to discuss with us international destinations are more beautiful and cleaner, we always feel bad and think that we are still slaves of the western world mentally.

The movement of Swacch Bharat led by Hon’ble Prime Minister encourage us to work towards no plastic and plantation drives. We also did rain water harvesting and launched activities on waste management. We worked with women and also collaborate with the Indore Nagar Nigam, Indore has risen to first place in cleanliness index in the country. We also motivated the people who work with us on waste management primary the cleaners and educating them about the importance of health and hygiene. We worked with them to provide them with all the facilities.

When you were working on this cause, did you receive the support of the local authorities? How did they help you?

As we were working and our Facebook Community Group were spotted by the officials of Nagar Nigam, and they saw my picture with our workers on the road cleaning. They contacted us. Once they knew that we had a large community that is dedicated, passionate and creating awareness on cleanliness, they contacted me and asked us to join hands to make a greater impact in the city. People generally have misconception about NGOs but once I got this recognition from the authorities, people got to know that we are authentic. The authorities also helped us to grow and gave us a lot of responsibilities and opportunities. I really like the fact that a lot of people are supporting us and helping us.

Although our NGO is quite popular now and a lot of people know about it, we have also gotten recognition internationally, but we still want to connect more and bring a lot more people with us in the NGO. Our NGO, Bwise Welfare Society, works at the ground level and with the slums in such a way that they try to solve every problem that arises at the slum and try to bridge the gap between these people and the higher authorities; We also have this initiative that every day you have to say thank you and sorry to five people. It’s like every day you meet so many people and you should appreciate them, like small vendors or rickshawwalas, etc. and we should also say sorry if we tend to disrespect them by any means.

We would like to know more about how your family supported you and what kind of help did you receive from them?

Answer: As I’m the elder daughter in my family and also in my in-laws’, I’m the only daughter-in-law, so they saw me as a support system and trusted me and they knew I could do it, so I don’t even remember if any family member raised any kind of question on this. Everyone in my family, be it my husband or my parents or be it my kids, when they know that I am going for social work, then the whole family stands up to support me. My husband and my children have given me their unwavering support and stand beside me like a rock. My husband is a great source of inspiration for me and he not only support me but also encouraged that we will stay in our country and work for the people in our homeland.

I want to give the message through FounderLabs that if your daughter wants to do something in her life, then please support her and let her do what she wants. You never know, she could become something so big and could make a great difference in this world.

Do you want to share any interesting stories or facts about your NGO with us?

So, as we work with women and we are also very vocal about yoga and exercise in our NGO, some women were not doing yoga, so we enquired about it and they said, “Ma’am, as we wear sarees, it’s difficult to do yoga in them, also it’s not allowed in our homes and we don’t have space at our place to do yoga.” In India, not everyone lives at a lavish home, so we could understand what these women were talking about. So we did this thing called “yoga in saree.” We also looked at how much space they have in their homes and then figured out the ways we could include yoga in their lives.

Can you share few details about your life, education, or professional journey ?

I am a physiotherapist. I have specialized in Orthopedics by completing a PG in it. Then I thought that all the patients wouldn’t be the same because there are so many rigorous exercises in this, so I tried to convert it in a way that people don’t have to buy any weight or any band or wrist support or anything like that. Then I also learnt about Yoga so that I could help senior citizens who would not be able to do these exercises, so then I shifted to acupressure. Then in acupressure I learnt about natural therapies like mud therapy, colour therapy, music therapy, etc., so we worked with all of these and learnt all of them so that I can work better with people. Since childhood, I understood that every person is different from each other. People try to put everyone into a box. People see a report card and judge a child, which is a very big problem for our future generations. So we did DMIT counselling because observation psychology was my favorite, and we used it to try to create a balance between kids and adults.

What is the message for your readers through FounderLabs?

I first want to congratulate and thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak with you. I just want to say that when you see a new initiative, please support it and appreciate it always. And in social causes, there is no “I” or “Me”… there should be an “us”. If you want to do social work, you don’t need to spend a lot of money or give a lot of time. You just have to have the heart to work for this cause. When you do that, you will make someone smile, and that will lead you to smile on your own. And I want to say that please do connect with us on Facebook and LinkedIn and support us in this cause. Please follow us and you can check out our work on these platforms to see for yourself how we work, and then if you have any work for me, I will always be available to you. Thank you.