As we come up on 21st Nov, we would have completed 5 years since the formation of MitraFoundation. We had registered the trust, triggered by personal loss of a friend, Shakti, in 2013, and got onto our first endeavor -Jeevan Shakti Fund. Along the way, we had started our second initiative, LBS JanaSahayog, in July 2014, in line with our original intent of making Mitra Foundation a multi-initiative organization. We got our approval under Section 12(A) in June 2015, and the approval for 80(G) which allows tax deduction on donations into Mitra Foundation.

The focus of Jeevan Shakti Initiative was to work with families of terminally ill patients. We had started with 3 families in our first financial year, and have over the past 5 years it has been running, looked at over 60 opportunities and worked actively with over 40 of them . We also organized 5 rounds of Jeevan Shakti Manch, one in each of 2014-18, where we bring together all the donors, volunteers, well-wishers and the beneficiaries.
It is comforting that we have been able to sustain this for 5years. There were many things that made this possible. Firstly, when we started, we had found a very able partner and mentor in Karunashraya. We had been introduced to many families that were in difficult times , giving us an opportunity to support them. We had interacted with over 60 opportunities, and have learnt from each of them. To be able to scale the level of our effort, we needed the support and wishes of many donors, both from our friends, family and others. No work can be accomplished in isolation, and in our case we had interacted with and leveraged from other organizations like Unnati, APSA & Sanman . To do justice to the commitment we have given, requires all the time and involvement from our many volunteers.
We have set a goal for ourselves to double the our scale from where we were an year ago, by 2020. This requires us to actively support 40+ families at any given time. This requires funds of the order of Rs 10L year, needing us to look for additional sources of contributions; and more volunteering bandwidth to be able to do justice to the commitment. Looking forward to the next many years , we need the continued belief and support of all of our well wishers to help us achieve our goals.
Thanks Shakti, for leading us onto this journey, in your demise, and will take this opportunity to commit to keep the trigger alive, and stay on the path.

~ Prem