Pick A Fight Challenges You to Care

PickAFight.in is a community that connect those who are fighting for a cause and looking for help, with people that are willing to join in and help. A ‘fight’ could be a social good initiative from a non-profit, a company or an individual or a group of friends in their local community.

What strikes us as different about PickAFight is their motivation to drive a lot of offline interaction through volunteering events.

We met with Anupama, Sumit and Ketan, founders of PickAFight and IT professionals in Bangalore, India’s Software capital, but who’re now shifting gears and mobilizing support for causes across India. Here’s what they have to say:

The beginnings in Anupama’s words:
“I’d just got back from a wonderful day volunteering at an orphanage and was telling my friend about it when he exclaimed that he would have loved to be a part of it. He asked me the address and was surprised to find out he had been living close to the orphanage all these years and did not know about them. That’s when I saw an opportunity to connect people and causes. Our objective is to create a new culture of giving and helping through PickAFight.”

Sumit adds: Giving for social change is like an investment which will come back to benefit us and our future generations. We’re privileged to have grown up in India in the last 20 years and benefit from India’s economic progress. But there is still a large part of India who have missed out. We want to help foster inclusive growth, and this is our way of helping.

How PickAFight works:
Most people don’t know where to go and whom to approach to volunteer their time or resources. Also trust is a factor.
We find trustworthy volunteering opportunities for individuals and communities where people can join in, without having to worry that the cause is genuine. Our community is made up of people from Kashmir to Karnataka, and from New York to Hyderabad volunteering their time and skills.

We’ve got teams in cities like Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi. We have requests to help out for different pieces of work, such as design, communications, technology. People come up with new ideas, meet and discuss them and partner with NGOs and try to help out.

For example, “Gift Your Organ” is a non-profit that promotes Organ Donation. They held a 5 day training program for transplant co-ordinators at different hospitals in Bangalore. 60 people from all over the country participated. We helped them design the marketing material for this event. They also want to hold awareness sessions in schools, colleges and companies to spread awareness about Organ Donation. We are reaching out to our network to help arrange this for them.

Then “Beyond Carlton”, an NGO works with the fire department to spread awareness about fire safety. They needed help using social media and to redesign their website. We connected them to a volunteer social media strategist and web designers who are helping them free of cost. We are glad we are able to contribute to their cause.

So what next?
We already have a functional team in Bangalore and are building teams in Mumbai and Delhi as we speak. So if you want to join our teams in these cities, or setup your own team in your city, do contact us.

You can get in touch with Sumit or Anupama via PickAFight.in or via twitter and Facebook.