27 April,2010 10:05 AM IST | | Kasmin Fernandes
India's first donation-free NGO wants to fight world hunger, with a little help from you. All you've got to do is click, and a sponsor ends up paying for a hungry child's meal
In the midst of all the heartburn and face-offs the Food Security Bill is causing, an Internet activism site silently feeds the country's hungry, sans donations of any kind. All you have to do to send food to the hungry is click on a 'give free food' button on Bhookh.com. "The staple food is paid for by the website's sponsors," says Internet entrepreneur Jay V Sutaria, who founded the non-profit organisation after the death of childhood friend Lt. Nawang Kapadia in fatal combat in Kashmir, only 11 days after his posting. "Nawang and I always talked about 'making a difference'. This is my bit," he says in a chat at his studio apartment in an old-world building in Bandra.u00a0
Once a day, you can click on the 'give free food' button and fund the purchase and distribution of a cup of staple food for a person in one of the 6,50,000 anganwadis -- community-based institutions in Integrated Child Development Services.
The staple food refers to Indiamix, a nutritious blend of wheat, soy, vitamins and minerals sourced by the UN-World Food Programme Bhookh donates to. "It's quite an incredible blend -- the khichdi and rotis made out of it are yummy," says Jay.
Each sponsor on the Thank You page pays per click. The amount paid is based on the type and structure of advertising agreement they have with Bhookh.com. The two keys to the success of Bhookh.com are sponsors, and visitors. "So, the more visitors who click each day, the greater the number of people who go to bed healthy and happy," says Jay.u00a0
How Bhookh.com works
The site's sponsors pay for your daily click. The sponsors purchase tiles on the website for a certain amount of time. Bhookh.com then tabulates the number of people who click during that time frame and bill the sponsor for the appropriate amount. Bhookh.com donates this money to the Indian chapter of UN World Food Programme towards food for the chronically hungry.
What happens when you click on the "give free food" button:
Your click is registered with the portal's computer server and is added to the daily results.
It moves you to the 'Thank You' page where tiles bearing the names of that day's site sponsors are displayed. There is absolutely no charge to you; the food is fully paid for by the sponsors.
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15,000, the number of daily clicks on Bhookh.com
1,000 number of visitors every week on the non-profit's Facebook page
1/3rd of the world's hungry live in India
6,50,000 Anganwadis in India cater to around 100 chronically hungry people a day
